4 dead, 10 injured in Matador, Texas, tornado
Two tornados were confirmed to have touched down near the small town of Matador, Texas, causing destruction while killing four and injuring 10 through Wednesday night.
As part of the relief effort, Lubbock Fire Rescue confirmed the death and injury count Thursday morning, saying that all 10 injured were successfully transported to the hospital nearby. Local police, fire and EMS services were also at the scene assisting in search and rescue efforts to the town of just under 600.
Leading up to the tornado, the area had been experiencing an extreme heat wave which could have impacted the extreme storm weather, reported Axios.
Lubbock Fire Rescue shared a video of the damage done before the sun had come up, and called the tornado “unprecedented” with “damaging winds,” in a statement on Twitter.
The Town of Matador has experienced an unprecedented tornado bringing damaging winds to the town. There are four confirmed fatalities & ten total injuries. Seven of which were transported by EMS and three by personal vehicle. pic.twitter.com/ERZ0BYNL0A
— Lubbock Fire Rescue (@LubbockFireTX) June 22, 2023
Several buildings in the town “are heavily damaged or destroyed,” the National Weather Service reported.
“The western part of town has been pretty much wiped out,” Brandon Moore, a city official in Matador, told The Washington Post. “It’s really a mess.”
More footage of the damage is seen in a video shared by Live Storms Media on YouTube, which shows the hail and rain during the storm, and the after-effects — including a loose horse, flipped semi-trucks and aerial footage of collapsed buildings in the daylight.
Since Wednesday, several storm warnings have been issued in northern Texas, including in Motley and nearby Afton, per NOAA.
More than 205,000 people are without power in Texas due to extreme weather as of Thursday morning, according to poweroutage.us.
