North Texas tornado outbreak caused $2 billion in losses, the costliest in state history
The tornadoes that tore through northern Texas on Sunday will be the costliest tornado outbreak in Texas history, according to the Insurance Council of Texas.
That historic bill is expected to be about $2 billion for the damage caused by the outbreak of at least nine tornadoes in northern Texas, council spokeswoman Camille Garcia told CNN Thursday.
One tornado touched down in Dallas around 9:30 p.m. Sunday, the National Weather Service confirmed. It was rated Monday as an EF-3 storm with winds of 140 mph.
Three people were taken to hospitals with storm-related injuries that were not life-threatening, according to the Dallas Office of Emergency Management.
The tornadoes also damaged buildings, uprooted trees and snapped utility poles in half, CNN affiliate KTVT reported. Monday morning, more than 100,000 customers were without power in the Dallas/Fort Worth metropolitan area, power company Oncor said.
“Considering the path that the storm took — it went across a pretty densely populated part of our city — I think we should consider ourselves very fortunate that we did not lose any lives, no fatalities and no serious injuries in last night’s storm,” Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson said at a news conference.
Garcia said the previous most-expensive tornado outbreak in Texas came in 2015, when twisters struck the towns of Garland and Rowlett, causing $1.2 billion in losses.
The weekend tornado outbreak was part of a line of storms that killed two people in the Great Plains. One man was killed in northwestern Arkansas after a tree fell on his home, said Robert McGowen, a spokesman for Benton County Emergency Management.
Another person was killed in Valliant, Oklahoma, after a tree fell on their home during the storms Sunday night, Oklahoma Emergency Management spokeswoman Keli Cain said.
