Wind damage

GARDENDALE Jocelyn Travis was munching on an orange ice pop Wednesday evening, telling her mother Kara that she was going to play at a friend's house.

Just a day earlier, the five-year-old's playtime on a trampoline was interrupted by what neighbors are calling a tornado that cut through the Gardendale Mobile Home Park. It literally lifted her in the air and threw her into a broken metal roof, cutting her stomach and requiring several stitches.

As the residents of the small mobile home park gathered to fix up the downed trees and metal scraps taken off four of the trailers' roofs, Jocelyn and all the neighbors shrugged off the scrapes and spent the entire day cleaning up.

"She was out there ... wanting to help us even though she had 10 stitches," Lulu Owens said.

National Weather Service meteorologist Eric Platt said they received a call from the Ector County Sheriff's Office on the incident there Tuesday night, and the NWS did observe an "outflow boundary" that went through Gardendale, but saw "nothing tornadic" according to their radar.

Park owner Roger Hahn and three of the tenants spent the day fixing one of the four roofs. Hahn said one doublewide's roof was completely torn off and the tenants there were living with relatives until they could get the supplies to replace it.

To Hahn and the others, it came way too quick Tuesday.

"It seemed like there was no weather warning," Hahn said. "Kids were still out in the streets playing."