Texans start cleanup after tornadoes

FORNEY, Texas -- As a twister bore down on her neighborhood, Sherry Enochs grabbed the three young children in her home and hid in her bathtub. The swirling winds snatched away two of the children. Her home collapsed around her.

Miraculously, no one was seriously hurt.

Enochs, 53, stood yesterday amid the wreckage of what was once her home in Forney, east of Dallas, among the hardest hit by a series of tornadoes that barreled through a day earlier. No one was reported dead, and of the more than 20 injured, only a handful were seriously hurt.

"If you really think about it, the fact that everybody who woke up in Forney yesterday is alive today in Forney, that's a real blessing," Mayor Darren Rozell said.

The National Weather Service is investigating the damage as the tornadoes appeared to flatten some homes and graze others next door. The twisters jumped from place to place, passing many heavily populated areas overhead and perhaps limiting what could have been a more damaging, deadly storm. Most of Dallas was spared the full wrath of the storms. Having two major tornado systems strike a single metropolitan area is highly unusual, meteorologist Jesse Moore said.

The twisters would have done more damage had they stayed on the ground for more of the storms' path. But weather experts credited quick response to tornado warnings for preventing deaths or more injuries.

In the Diamond Creek subdivision where Enochs' home was, people put on work gloves to began cleaning up. Many noticed things in their front yards that didn't belong to them.

Enochs doesn't have a clear memory of exactly what happened, but she was found holding her grandson in the bathtub, which had blown into the area where her garage once was. A 3-year-old she was watching was found wandering in the backyard. A neighbor pulled another child Enochs had been taking care of, Abigail Jones, 19 months, from the rubble.

Seven people were injured in Forney, none seriously. Another 10 people were hurt in Lancaster, south of Dallas, and three people in Arlington, west of Dallas.