Burnet County hit hardest by storm

BURNET COUNTY, Texas (KXAN) - The severe weather Thursday night hit Burnet County the hardest.

Wind gusts tossed Burnet's RV park around, injuring several people. Now, the people in Burnet County start recovering from the extensive damage.

Take a tour of the Burnet RV park:

"I don't know; I'd never really seen anything like that," said Christa Craven. "The wind was just coming at me like that. The RV actually tipped probably about 45 degrees or so. Luckily, I was right by the couch, kind of landed on it and got up."

Craven's home alone is enough to show you the strength of the wind. Just a few feet away, it crushed a steel picnic table, something so sturdy reduced to a coil of metal in a matter of minutes.

"Whenever bad storms come in, bad thunderstorms with winds of 60 miles per hour or more, people need to realize they need to get to a sturdy structure," said Paul Yura, National Weather Service.

As quickly as the storms struck her home, Christa said the people of Burnet offered their help. Thursday night, she stayed at the mayor's house.

"They were just great last night," said Craven. "I got so many calls last night that my phone actually died."

"When something like this happens, you just get in there and help," said Ann Oliver, Burnet resident. "Do the best you can."

Craven's mom rushed from 100 miles away to be with Christa and said someone beyond the residents here must have been watching over her daughter.

"Thankfully, she left her cat with me in San Antonio or else she would have stayed with the trailer looking for him," said Cathy Cox, Craven's mother.

Christa calls it luck but knows that first rocking of her RV was indeed a warning.

"Yeah, it was a real big warning," said Craven. "Get the heck out of Dodge."

She got out just before her trailer tipped over completely and sought a safer shelter out of the storm. Because of this quick thinking, she escaped any injury.

Orange "X's" mark homes all over Burnet County, noting it is no longer safe to live there. John Harker and his wife pulled into Burnet's RV Park just an hour before the storm hit.

"We sat down to the dining room table, and the next thing we knew, it was turned upside down," said John Harker, a resident that survived the storm.

A refrigerator pinned John in the toppled trailer. A picnic table that flew through the window held Carolyn, his wife, down.

"It just happened so fast, I didn't even have time to think," said Carolyn.

Their only injuries were a few scrapes and John has some fractured ribs.

As quickly as the storm rolled in, Burnet citizens, people the Harkers had never met, came to their rescue.

"[The paramedic] asked me what size of clothes I wore, so he brought my wife a sweatshirt and sweatpants and brought me what I've got on," said John.

As the couple makes arrangements to continue home, John said, on the plus side, at least they will not have to unpack. And, that, if this storm was meant as an unscheduled stop on their itinerary to John's brother's 50th wedding anniversary.

For the residents in Burnet who suffered damage, they can drop off debris at Northington Street behind the little league field for the next three days.

Mayor Alan Smith took a tour of the damage to his town. Trees are snapped in half and ripped up at the roots.

"It breaks my heart," said Smith. "But then I go back to the Bible where God says that all things come to good- and I have seen the community effort here in the city is just awe inspiring. Although there is quite a bit of damage, there's nothing that money won't take care of and just thank goodness there were no injuries and certainly no fatalities so I'm just very thankful for that."

The National Weather Service determined there was no tornado touchdown in Burnet, but winds reached 70 mph, ripping roofs off of buildings.