In Rockwall, one person suffered non-life-threatening injuries and about half a dozen houses suffered major structural damage as a result of severe storms that swept across the region during the early-morning hours of Wednesday.
The homes are in Rockwall’s Dalton Ranch residential neighborhood, which is near John King Boulevard and Dalton Road. Six or seven homes had walls or roofs destroyed and many others suffered moderate and minor damage, according to multiple reports.
“I think we can all be thankful – for the kind of damage that you see here – to have only one person that was just hurt is a miracle,” Rockwall Mayor Jim Pruitt told Fort Worth-based KXAS-TV. The injured man, whose name has not been made available, was taken to an area hospital and is expected to recover, Pruitt said.
The J.E.R. Chilton YMCA at Rockwall, located at 1210 North Goliad Street, is offering its facilities, including hot showers and electrical outlets, to anyone in the area affected by the storms.
The damage in Rockwall was among the most significant in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex as a result of the storms. National Weather Service staff will study and report on the weather event that caused the damage. At the time, the area was under a severe thunderstorm warning, but no tornado watches or warnings were in effect. The damage could have been caused by straight-line winds gusting to 80 mph.
Atmos Energy work crews were dispatched to Rockwall to repair damaged gas lines in the area, a company spokesman said.
Electricity service was disrupted in Rockwall, and some customers were still without power as of 10 a.m. on Wednesday. In nearby eastern Collin County, several hundred customers between Farmersville and the Collin-Rockwall county line lost service during the storms.
In Northeast Texas, Farmers Electric Cooperative and Oncor report that some customers throughout the region remain without electricity as of mid-morning.
