Construction Workers Move Debris After Tornado In Fort Worth
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FORT WORTH (CBS11) — The National Weather Service confirmed Friday that the storm that ripped the metal facade off the top of a north Fort Worth office building Thursday evening was, in fact, an EF0 tornado.
"You know, it's all hands on deck," said Scott McGuffie, a construction contractor with KHK Group who happened to be the right man at the right place to help clean up.
McGuffie made sure all hands were moving debris at daybreak. He was the contractor for another job across the street, saw the damage and rounded up about 20 workers to come help out.
"Construction isn't just building things," McGuffie said. "Its a service industry. We're here to serve our clients and they needed us."
Huge piles of twisted metal ripped from a roof facade covered the parking lot and buried vehicles at the Mercantile Plaza near Meacham Boulevard in northeast Fort Worth.
Drone video shows the exposed roof, air conditioners tossed about and crushed duct work. It will likely take several days to repair. As crews assessed the damage upstairs, McGuffie took in the sights below.
"The damage is pretty impressive," he said. "The damage to the vehicles is what really caught me."
He told his men he wanted the cars cleared of debris and back to their owners by the end of the day.
Jeff Sadler's pickup limped out of the parking lot by noon. It's a work truck for Sadler's ATD Painting company and, damaged or not, Sadler was hugely relieved to have it back.
"It was nice!" Sadler said. "I didn't know, when the fire department was here, I didn't know who was going to get the roof off my truck. I was just being shooed away and told I couldn't do it myself."
"If it was my vehicle laying there I would hope there would be somebody that would have the passion and the capacity to help me out, you know?" McGuffie said. "I would hope somebody would do the same for me."
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