At the Tuesday evening meeting of the City of Canyon Commissioners Court, Fire Chief Dennis Gwyn gave a report on the recent tornado that hit April 25, along with a review of actions taken during the disaster. A tornado touched down around 11:32 p.m. that evening, damaging some homes in the Madison Park area, in northwest Canyon. Fortunately, there were no injuries or casualties.
Gwyn said that some people reported not hearing the warning sirens. He explained, “These are outdoor warning sirens. When you’re mixing outdoor warning sirens and 110 mph wind, flying debris, and other noise, it’s understandable inside a building or even standing outside.” Gwyn said that they were sounding the sirens within 90 seconds of the tornado hitting the area, so the sound of the tornado, much like a loud train, could have muffled the sirens.
“It takes the radar at least three minutes to make a loop and in three minutes, it was not there one minute, and then it was there,” he added. The actual dropping down of the tornado was 11:32 p.m., but the warning was issued at 11:35 p.m. Gwyn said that they were watching weather to the southwest around the Hereford area coming toward Canyon when the funnel dropped.
JoAnne Culin with the Amarillo branch of the National Weather Service said that there have been four previous tornadoes touch down within the City of Canyon. The first one noted was in July of 1956, then another in June of 1962, which hit on the southern edge town. Two more were recorded in May of 1978 and 1987.
After the April 25 tornado struck, City Manager Joe Price had called Chief Gwyn and asked him to pick him up at his house, and the two went to the site of the tornado touchdown. They found pedestrian and vehicle traffic was basically clogging the streets, so they moved the command post to the Lawyers Title Building in town. After establishing a unified command post, the city departments represented were Police and Fire, Planning & Development, Communications, their Public Information (PIO) officer and Emergency Management people. Other agencies that participated were the Randall County Sheriff’s Office, Department of Public Safety and BMA. He added that the WTAMU Police Force also provided aid.
“All in all, we had 24 members of the Canyon Fire Department and 10 volunteer firefighters,” Gwyn said. “We called all our off-duty career staff, and we had 95 vehicles show up including fire trucks.”
After things calmed down, Command Post relocated to the Canyon Police Department, where they continued to monitor another approaching storm that had a confirmed tornado in it. Fortunately, it weakened as it approached Happy and Canyon.
The Canyon storm was assigned to a surveyors with the National Weather Service Office for damage assessment. The assessment determined it was an upper end, strong EF-1 tornado with maximum winds of 110 mph, determined to have started along Hunsley Road and have traveled north to Madison Park neighborhood, then southwest to damage a home on Aztec Drive.
“Calls for service were very minimal. The one call that went through dispatch involved windows being broken in their house, as well as a roof being blown off,” Gwyn said.
“We didn’t know how extensive it was until we got there. I vastly underestimated the numbers of onlookers we had, along with people that honestly just wanted to help. There were also companies being called in by insurance companies, too. We released the neighborhood, thinking that in the daylight, residents would be up and moving about, but we ended up having to recall people who had already been called in and released, mainly to control traffic in the area. The CFD members checked door to door for injured residents or damaged homes,” he said. “We sent our crew back to make sure we didn’t need to physically secure some of the homes from being burglarized.”
A total of 11 families were displaced at first from the storm damage; the number is now down to eight.
“Should this ever happen again, we would make sure the neighborhoods affected are secured,” Gwyn added. “We are continuing to build in even more automation so to push even more notifications out. We started debris management, using a Knuckleboom truck, with an arm to grab those larger things. Debris management can became a disaster in itself, if it’s not done property.”
“We hear what the citizens are saying and we are listening. We are working on providing a new siren on Aztec Road and possibly around Hunsley Hills,” Gwyn said.
This article originally appeared on Amarillo Globe-News: Calm in the storm: City of Canyon reviews actions taken in the recent tornado
Reporting by Nell Williams, Amarillo Globe-News / Amarillo Globe-News
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