Cordell Starts Clean Up After Storm Brings Damaging Winds

Clean up is underway in Cordell after Thursday's storms, which left a patchy trail of debris from the southwest side of town toward the northeast.

Winds blew over an awning and one pump at an old gas station on Main Street. Neighbors said they have also seen fairly significant hail damage with chunks of ice as big as baseballs falling, as the storms rolled through the area. Homes were riddled with holes in the siding.

Some mobile homes and car ports were destroyed by the strong winds. The storms also uprooted multiple large trees.

One family lost the home they were remodeling for a woman recently diagnosed with ALS.

Kelly Tilley donated a vacant mobile home on her property to her best friend Michele Parsons and her husband, who is also Tilley's cousin.

Parsons is slowly losing her motor functions, and her husband, a carpenter, had just started working on the home five months ago. He was almost done making it wheelchair accessible, but the winds blew the roof away and ruined almost everything inside.

Parsons was in Tilley's storm shelter when the winds started to pick up, and a large piece of her roof nearly landed on top of the cellar entrance, which would have trapped the family inside.

"You've got to live one day at a time and be thankful for what you've got because you never know when it's going to be gone," reflected Parsons.

"I'm really sad, just really sad," said Tilley. "I was hoping they would have something where she didn't have to move anywhere else to be a home."

The home was not covered by insurance, but the Parsons’ hope to buy a pre-fabricated home to put in its place.

Power was also out, as the winds knocked down lines all over town. Crews worked all through Thursday night and Friday to get the electricity restored to everyone in Cordell.