At least 11 people, including two children, killed in tornadoes and storms in the US | Climate crisis news

Tornadoes and storms leave a trail of devastation in parts of Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas.

At least eleven people, including two children, were killed in violent storms in the USA. They left a wide trail of destruction in Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas. Numerous houses and a rest area where drivers had sought shelter were destroyed.

Seven deaths were reported in Cooke County, Texas, near the Oklahoma border, where a tornado swept through a rural area near a mobile home park Saturday night, officials said.

In Oklahoma, at least two people were killed when a tornado hit Mayes County late Saturday night, county emergency management director Johnny Janzen told Fox News affiliate station Tulsa.

And in northern Arkansas, two people were killed in storms in the early hours of Sunday morning, local authorities confirmed.

“All that’s left is a trail of rubble. The devastation is pretty bad,” Cooke County Sheriff Ray Sappington told the Associated Press on Sunday.

Among the dead were two children, ages two and five, the sheriff said.

Hugo Parra, who lives in Farmers Branch, north of Dallas, said he rode out the storm in a gas station bathroom with about 40 to 50 people.

“A firefighter came to check on us and said, ‘You were very lucky,'” Parra said. “The best way to describe it is: The wind was trying to blow us out of the bathrooms.”

Several people were taken by ambulance and helicopter to hospitals in Denton County, Texas, also north of Dallas. However, officials did not initially know the exact extent of their injuries.

Elsewhere in Denton County, a tornado overturned semi-trailers and brought traffic to a standstill on Interstate 35, county spokeswoman Dawn Cobb said. An emergency shelter was set up in the rural town of Sanger.

As the storm passed through, at least 60 to 80 people were in a rest stop along the highway, some of them seeking shelter. But there were no serious injuries, Sappington said.

Storms also caused damage in Oklahoma. Guests at an outdoor wedding were injured. According to the website PowerOutage.us, around 375,000 people were without power in Texas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Kansas and Arkansas early Sunday morning.

Meteorologists and authorities issued urgent warnings to seek shelter as the storms moved across the region overnight. “If you are in the path of this storm, seek shelter immediately!” the National Weather Service office in Norman, Oklahoma, posted on the social media platform X.

April and May were tornado-rich months, especially in the Midwest. Iowa was hit hard last week when a deadly tornado devastated Greenfield. Other storms brought flooding and storm damage to other parts of the state.

Even worse weather conditions were forecast for Sunday in the Great Plains region, and tornado warnings are still in effect in many places. In Texas, however, the National Weather Service said the danger had decreased.

“It’s being rebuilt,” Sappington told ABC affiliate WFAA. “It’s Texas.”