<h1>Weather Update : Tornadoes Destruction in a Small Texas Town</h1>
Pete Lucas, 75, sat outside his home in this flotsam and jetsam strewn East Texas town on Monday and gazed at J.E. Rhodes Elementary School adjacent.
A monster tree had toppled onto a school play area, saving the yellow turning slide. An area of aluminum material dangled from the branches of his front-yard tree. Inside the classrooms, smashed glass, pieces of yellow protection and openings in the roof conflicted with development paper drawings, racks of Elmer's paste and Cat in the Hat stickers. Mr. Lucas and different occupants of this town of 2,600 said they were appreciative, in any event, that the tornado that destroyed Van hit on Sunday night, when the school structures and play areas were void.
"In the event that the children had been here, it would have been crushing," Mr. Lucas said.
In a state with an extensive rundown of notable and lethal calamities — storms, modern blasts, rapidly spreading conflagrations — the tornado that cleared through Van on Sunday appeared to be somewhat little scale. Two individuals were murdered, 47 others were sent to doctor's facilities with wounds and 100 homes were harmed or crushed in the zone, the powers said. Yet, in such a residential area, 73 miles east of Dallas in Van Zandt County, the annihilation appeared to touch everybody and everything, and to cut more profound than if it had unfolded in a bigger and more urban territory.
Two of the town's five schools, Rhodes Elementary and Van Intermediate School, were intensely harmed. The two individuals who kicked the bucket, a spouse and wife, were more than simply unknown fatalities. Melinda Sherbert, whose harmed rooftop was secured with a blue covering, saw the wife on Sundays at Van United Methodist Church, where the lady had met expectations. The day after the tempest, late Monday evening, it was not those she knew well who were on Ms. Sherbert's psyche. It was the individuals who were outsiders to her, many them, who had gone to her home and cleaned up trash on her yard and made repairs