Houston Chronicle by Samantha Ketterer April 23, 2020
ONALASKA — A crowd of seven traveled across Kickapoo Creek in a pontoon boat, rushing to a road where they could call an ambulance.
The streets in their Onalaska neighborhood were impassable. The apparent tornado that tore through the East Texas town Wednesday night injured three of the vessel’s passengers, and they needed aid quicker than they could find it.
A boy on the boat screamed in pain as his grandmother offered comfort. A man gasped for breath, sprawled out on a door that had unhinged in the wind and served as his makeshift gurney. An elderly woman who narrowly escaped being flattened by her house’s collapse sat alongside a neighbor who happened to be a nurse as two others steered the boat.
For a night, the small community forgot about the international pandemic. They rescued their neighbors, they mourned the loss of their homes, they got ready to rebuild.
More:
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Tornado-devastates-small-Texas-town-of-Onalaska-15222766.php
Maria Jimenez looks through the rubble of her sister's home searching for family photos and other family heirlooms on
Thursday, April 23, 2020, after a tornado ripped through the area Wednesday night in Onalaska, Texas. Several people
were killed and more than 30 people were injured when a tornado ripped through the small East Texas city,
