Twisters Rip Texas, Kill At Least 27 -- `It Was Like A Big Vacuum Sucked Everything Up'

JARRELL, Texas - Rescuers crisscrossed swampy fields today looking for about two dozen people unaccounted for after a tornado devastated this central Texas town, killing at least 27.

The storm leveled about 50 homes yesterday and left wreckage and bits of clothing hanging from fences, cattle lying dead and a tractor-trailer rig upside down in a field.

Where the Double Creek Estates subdivision once stood, there was nothing.

"It's not there anymore," sheriff's deputy R.B. Raby said.

"It was like a big vacuum sucked everything up," said witness Max Johnson Jr.

Gov. George W. Bush visited Jarrell at midday and signed a disaster proclamation that is the first step in seeking federal aid. Damage in Jarrell alone could reach $20 million, state Insurance Commissioner Elton Bomer said.

"The devastation was mind-boggling," Bush said. "It's hard to believe you're looking at a patch of earth where life was literally sucked out of it."

Survivors sought counseling today at a white clapboard church, while volunteers at the schoolhouse sorted donated clothing into piles for men, women and children. Telephone messages for now-homeless residents were left on a blackboard.

The state Department of Public Safety's crime lab was asked to help identify the bodies. In Austin, the state Senate observed a moment of silence.

The state's deadliest tornadoes in a decade ripped through four counties in central Texas - from Waco to Austin. Jarrell, a town of 1,000 about 40 miles north of Austin, was hit hardest, with the debris so scattered that even compiling a death toll was difficult today.

The medical examiner and a hospital said today they had 27 bodies from Jarrell, where the tornado blazed a trail about a mile long and 200 yards wide. One person was killed by a twister in Austin and another drowned in Travis County.

In addition, 23 people were unaccounted for in Jarrell and five more were missing in Cedar Park, where a grocery store collapsed, injuring at least eight people. Hospitals in the region reported treating at least 25 injured people.

Up to 150 rescue workers slogged across fields through water up to knee-deep today to look for body parts or survivors.

"In disasters we've seen like this before across the country, there've been some miracles, some people found alive after several hours and sometimes a few days. We hope to still find somebody alive," Williamson County Sheriff Ed Richards said.

The tornado whirled at an estimated 200 mph or faster and was on the ground for 25 to 30 minutes, said National Weather Service meteorologist Al Dreumont. And based on the way it leveled homes and shredded asphalt, it likely will be classified as a 4 on a scale of 1 to 5.

"It was too large to outrun and too strong to have survived unless you got away from the path," Dreumont said.

Ray Westphal, manager of a Wendy's restaurant in Cedar Park about 25 miles away, said he and others watched the approaching storm from his parking lot "until the funnel started coming through the sky. Then everyone panicked."

"As it got closer, building tops were flying around. It was picking cars right up into the air, flinging them everywhere."

Michael Carmona was driving home to Double Creek Estates when the storm struck. Only a muddy lot was left where his home once stood and his wife, Ruth, and 13-year-old daughter, Satyn, were missing.

"It's gone. Everything's gone," Carmona said.

Richards said he was unsure how much warning people had, but that from what he'd seen it probably didn't matter.

The deaths in Jarrell were not concentrated in one building. Instead, they were evenly scattered along the path where the tornado hit - a mile-long swath about one-half to three-quarters of a mile wide, Richards said.

"It's leveled. There were houses, trees, cars. Now there's nothing. Dead cows everywhere," said Steven Gaswint, 17. "It's terrible."

He had learned that three of his close friends from school had died. He was in nearby Georgetown when the storm hit.

"I'm a little bit under control," he said. "I cried for an hour before."

Hearses trickled in as rescue workers began retrieving bodies at Double Creek. Stunned residents wandered around in the rain, crying and consoling each other.

"You could hear all the volunteers calling out, hoping someone would answer," said Mark Johnson, whose father is pastor of the Jarrell Baptist Church. "But it was pretty quiet."

Pastor Max Johnson Sr. tried to comfort frightened children.

"It's hard to know what to say, because right now no one knows who's missing and who's dead," he said. "In a town this small, there's probably not one person who did not know someone killed . . ."

The Red Cross and Salvation Army set up a shelter in the high school. Hundreds of people milled around, waiting for word of loved ones, as McDonald's meals and barbecue went mostly untouched.

At the First Baptist Church of Jarrell, B.J. Barner was waiting for word about a missing friend. She had learned that authorities had found a woman who fit her friend's description, but she still wasn't sure.

"I was sewing her a dress," she said over and over.

Only three miles northeast of Double Creek Estates, the heart of town, which includes the school and other city buildings, was spared.

This is the second time in less than a decade that Jarrell has been terrorized by a tornado. In 1989, a tornado killed one person and severely damaged or destroyed 35 homes and a dozen mobile homes.

"This is worse," resident Janeen Brock said. "It's going to be awful. They're going to have to bury so many people."

The tornadoes were the state's deadliest since 30 people died and 162 were injured in the far West Texas town of Saragosa on May 22, 1987. The two deadliest tornadoes in Texas history occurred in Waco on May 11, 1953, and in Goliad on May 18, 1902. Each storm killed 114 people.

In Bell County, a tornado destroyed a marina and at least five boats. Several houses also were reported destroyed, but no injuries were confirmed.