‘Like a bomb went off’: Temple residents survey tornado damage

Texas weather: Temple destroyed by tornado

An EF 2 tornado with 120 mph winds touched down in Temple on Wednesday, bringing chaos and destruction to parts of the city.

TEMPLE, Texas - From the ground up, roof repairs were being made, and branches and debris were being cleared Thursday morning after a tornado ripped through Temple.

Richard Perez and his daughter, Evelyn, were at their apartment off West Adams Avenue on Wednesday evening, but left to go pick up Evelyn’s friend who was home alone.

"We took off, and I thought we were going to come back," said Richard. "But when we left, we made this left next to the school, and then we saw it right next to us."

Texas weather: Bell County tornado damage

A disaster declaration has been issued in Bell County to help recover from the devastating storms on Wednesday.

Watching the tornado head in their direction, they made it safely to the friend’s house and decided they were going to have to wait out the storm there.

"Her house is fine. It's just a fence that's knocked over, but like a few houses down, [people's houses are] torn up," said Evelyn. "That was just a few houses away. How did we survive this?"

Joe Barron drove up from Georgetown on Thursday morning. He owns more than 30 rental properties in a neighborhood near Tarver Elementary School.

"We called all of our tenants to just kind of do our damage assessment and to make sure they were okay," said Barron. "And then we came early this morning and started fixing broken glass and tarps and that kind of stuff, putting tarps over windows, cleaning up glass inside and just doing the most critical fixes for our tenants."