Texas tornadoes: 6 dead, 7 missing, dozens injured, officials say

Officials and residents in north-central Texas had to wait until daybreak to assess the damage caused by a string of tornadoes that touched down Wednesday night, leaving at least six people dead, dozens injured and hundreds homeless.

At least seven people remained unaccounted for Thursday morning, Hood County spokesman Tye Bell said.

In Granbury, Texas, about 65 miles southwest of Dallas, about 50 people were injured, Hood County Sheriff Roger Deeds said at a midnight briefing. Of those, 14 were admitted to the hospital, and two were transferred to a hospital in nearby Fort Worth. Another 50 gathered at an elementary school in the town of about 8,000 to "have their injured children examined by paramedics," the Associated Press said.

[Slideshow: Deadly tornadoes rip through north Texas]

Some of the dead were found in houses, Deeds said. Others "were found around houses."

"There was a report that two of these people that they found were not even near their homes," he added. "So we're going to have to search the area out there."

According to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, many homes in the hardest-hit neighborhood in Granbury—Rancho Brazos—were constructed by Habitat for Humanity.

“Most of the neighborhood is heavily damaged to destroyed,” Deeds said. “Very little is untouched.”

More from the AP:

Behind one house in the storm's path sits a detached garage stripped of much of its aluminum siding, the door caved in and its roof torn off. Siding was scattered up to 50 yards away, and bits of fiberglass insulation draped on a fence. A tree behind the house was stripped of most of its branches, and a vacant doublewide mobile home on an adjoining lot was torn apart.

"We were all, like, hugging in the bathtub and that's when it started happening," Elizabeth Tovar, a Granbury resident, told the news service. "I heard glass shattering and I knew my house was going. We looked up and the whole ceiling was gone."

Teresa Woodward, a reporter for Dallas-Fort Worth's WFAA-TV, surveyed the damage at sunrise.

Videos uploaded to YouTube show the Granbury tornado:

According to the National Weather Service, another tornado about a mile wide tore through Cleburne, Texas, about 25 miles southeast of Granbury. There were no reports of deaths and no immediate reports of injuries, according to Cleburne Mayor Scott Cain.

Yet another tornado touched down in Millsap, west of Fort Worth. There were no injuries there, either, though hail as large as grapefruit was reported.

A Vine video shared by Granbury resident Amy Castaneda showed a large piece of hail from the storm.

At least 10 tornadoes touched down in north Texas Wednesday, weather officials said.