Mom Huddled In Bathtub With Daughters As Twister Hit
ARLINGTON (CBSDFW.COM) - Several hundred homeowners in Arlington are assessing damage to their homes today, picking up the pieces of what's left, after a tornado struck in the city.
Lisa Repstock huddled with her two young daughters as the storm hit.
"I had grabbed the babies and we had gone into a safe place inside the center of the house -- in the bathroom," she remembered. "We had been in there for about three minutes when it hit. So we had just gotten in there. We'd gotten underneath blankets, and pillows, and pot and pans that I had," she said laughing, "'cause I didn't know what was gonna happen."
National Weather Service officials suggest the storm that hit Arlington was an EF-2 twister; meaning a tornado with winds between 111 and 135 miles per hour. Lisa Repstock believes it.
"A piece of roof from down the street came into our garage door and it's all damaged," she said. "The windows are busted out in the front of the house. A lot of the roof, the shingles, are all off. There's not a fence that's up. We've got a lot of damage to deal with inside the house, as well as outside."
Emergency Warning Sirens sounded and then, "We heard the loud noise and it does sound like a train," Lisa said reassuringly, "It sounded like a train was coming through my house and I knew that something was going to be horrific when I came out."
♦♦♦Check Out Photos Of The Storm Damage♦♦♦
Lisa's husband, Ben Repstock was at work when the twister hit his house. After hours in the safe space of a company building Ben was able to check on his family, but he soon ran into another emergency.
"I ran down to get a phone and tried to get ahold of my wife," he said. "I finally got ahold of her, she was safe and everything, but I was trying to get home. And every time I would try to get home there was another warning that another tornado was coming up."
Ben said when he finally reached the neighborhood and began weaving to his home; he couldn't believe what he saw.
"I thought I was on a movie set. It was almost like what you see in the movies. It was just such mass destruction. I have never seen anything like it."
In Arlington alone, some 428 Arlington homes were damaged in Tuesday's storms, with most of those dwellings between Arkansas Lane and Sublett Road.
There is some good news for southwest Arlington residents. Tuesday evening most of the North Texas power outages were in the city of Arlington, with some 7,600 homes and businesses in the dark. By Wednesday afternoon the number of outages was down to 77.
Click here to check out Oncor's Enhanced Power Outage Map
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