Flights grounded after Texas tornadoes

About 500 flights remained grounded yesterday at one of the busiest US airports after as many as a dozen tornadoes tore through northern Texas, leaving thousands without power and hundreds of homes pummeled. Only a handful of people were hurt, a couple seriously, and no deaths were reported as of late Tuesday. The Red Cross estimated that 650 homes were damaged. Hundreds of flights into and out of Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport and Dallas Love Field were canceled or diverted elsewhere Tuesday. April is typically the worst month in a tornado season that stretches from March to June, but the outburst suggests that “we’re on pace to be above normal,” said National Weather Service meteorologist Matt Bishop. Ten people in Lancaster were injured, two of them severely, said Lancaster police officer Paul Beck. Three people were injured in Arlington, Assistant Fire Chief Jim Self said. In one industrial section of Dallas, rows of empty tractor-trailers crumpled like soda cans littered a parking lot. Most of Dallas was spared the full wrath of the storm. In Lancaster, television helicopters panned over exposed homes without roofs and flattened buildings. Utility Oncor said nearly 14,000 homes and businesses, mainly in the Arlington area, still had no electricity early yesterday. One tornado lifted trucks like toys in the Flying J Truck Plaza in Dallas, said truck driver Michael Glennon, who caught the destruction on his video camera as debris swirled through the air. “We’ve seen roofs blown off, houses totally flattened, tractor-trailers knocked over,” Moore said. On Tuesday evening, the storm system moved east into Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana with the potential of producing high winds and more tornadoes, Moore said. Sixth-grader Hailey Pellerin said she and other students had just started lunch when teachers quickly herded students back to their classrooms in their southwest Arlington elementary school. “We had to duck and cover for two hours,” she said. The students were seated, lined up against a wall in their classrooms and covered their heads. “The power went out so it was dark and hot.” The tornado passed about 200 180 meters from the school, her father David Pellerin said. “We were so lucky because it came so close but passed by the two schools my kids attend,” said Pellerin, the father of three. Some 110 planes were damaged by hail and 400 flights canceled at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, the eighth busiest in the world, stranding thousands of passengers. Another 40 incoming flights were diverted. During the height of the storm, witnesses at the airport said the sky turned dark and passengers were herded away from windows and into stairwells and restrooms. The US tornado season has started early this year. Tornadoes have been blamed for 57 deaths so far in 2012 in the Midwest and South, raising concerns that this year would be a repeat of 2011, the deadliest year in nearly a century for the unpredictable storms. In 2011, there were 550 tornado deaths, including 316 lives lost on April 27 in five southern states, and a massive tornado that killed 161 people in Joplin, Missouri, on May 22. Tuesday’s tornadoes in Texas could prove more costly than a hailstorm nearly a year ago in the Dallas area that caused more than $100 million in insured losses. That April 15, 2011, storm was less damaging in terms of hail and winds. Insurers have already lost as much as $2 billion during the 2012 tornado season, mostly from a record March 2 outbreak. That follows record-breaking losses of $26 billion during the 2011 tornado season.