High winds unleash damage in Angelina County

HUNTINGTON — Destructive winds roaring "like a freight train" touched down at several points along a two-mile stretch of Pahal Road about 5 a.m. Tuesday morning where it paused long enough to rip roofs from rafters, twist century-old trees from their trunks, relocate a trailer and snatch up a picnic table.

"The picnic table is gone! Who knows where we'll find it," said R.B. Forrest at 1021 Pahal Road. "It was made of pressure treated 2-by-6s. It was really heavy. And it's just gone."

Christine S. Diamond/The Lufkin Daily News (enlarge photo) Myron Mosley says this tree fell on his house in the 1100 block of Grove Avenue in Lufkin about 5 a.m. Wednesday.

Straight-line wind damage was part of a storm system recording 21-33 mph wind speeds on the radar, according to meteorologist Mark Frazier with the National Weather Service in Shreveport.

Leaning on his metal cane as he walked across his storm-littered homestead, Forrest stopped to point out the block where his metal trailer originally sat — before the storm winds set it back down several feet away.

Further back lay a pile of water-soaked boxes. It was all that remained of their metal storage shed — which was also picked up by the winds and thrown like a flat piece of sheet metal into the nearby barn. Poking through the exposed sodden pile, impervious to the increasing drizzle, Forrest began extracting packages of photos and horsemanship trophies, passing them to his wife.

Large pieces of metal hung in the tangled limbs of trees.

R.B. and his wife Mildred had wakened, as was their routine, at 4 a.m., he said.

"I was out on the front porch drinking coffee and had just gone inside," Forrest said of the moment the storm hit. "It was a like a jet plane sitting on our roof."

"It shook the whole house," Mildred Forrest said, still taking in the mess of metal and broken trees around her. "It's unreal."

A few houses down at 1275 Pahal Road, 19-year-old Amber Williams said she woke up at 5:15 a.m. exactly.

"I woke up and the power was going on and off," Williams said, while consoling Chrissy, a collie-mix that weathered the storm beneath the house and returned with a limping blonde Labrador in tow. "All I heard was tin getting ripped of the roof and a sound like a freight train."

Williams said she and her mother watched the stormy winds whip through their darkened yard from a porch door.

"It lasted not even five minutes' total," she said.

It was enough time to strip the metal roofing from large sections of their house, displace a refrigerator and an armchair, and snap apart electric lines.

Pieces of metal roofs and shingle roofs belonging to homes, barns and storage sheds were scattered across the lawns and fields of those residing between Treadwell Cemetery and Keith Carrell's Logging office.

Pct. 3 Commissioner Robert Loggins said this section of Pahal Road appeared to have borne the brunt of the storm's path. His crews spent the morning hauling debris first from the road and then Treadwell Cemetery. In all, crewman Tim Womack said, they cleared out five large truckloads of debris from the cemetery alone by 1 p.m.

Even then, there remained many more small pieces of broken limbs and leaves scattered between the tussled memorial wreathes and toppled urns to be tied by groundskeepers.

Lightning continued to touch down in the county's southern end as late as noon Wednesday.

Beyond these points on Pahal Road, Angelina County residents were unaware of the storm's damage.

While the storm did leave about 600 Lufkin residents without power, Lufkin assistant city manager Keith Wright said there were no reports of tornado damage in the city. Some of these customers were told it would be 3 p.m. before power would be restored.

Myron Mosley returned home from his night shift in Corrigan to handle bigger problems than a power outage. His wife and two young children were home asleep when the storm sent a large oak crashing into their home in the 1100 block of West Grove Avenue. Like those on Pahal Road, Mosley said his family was uninjured and anticipated his homeowners' insurance would cover the damage.

Staff writers Hina Alam, Ashley Cook, Jessica Savage, and City Editor Gary Willmon contributed to this story.

View photo slideshow of storm damage.