Rescuers searched for missing people Wednesday in this town devastated by a killer tornado that left telephone poles snapped, bits of clothing hanging from fences and a tractor-trailer upside down in a field.
Dead cattle lay side-by-side, and where the Double Creek Estates once stood, there was nothing."It's not there anymore," sheriff's deputy R.B. Raby said of the housing tract that was wiped out by one of several tornadoes that roared through Texas on Tuesday, killing at least 33 people.
"I don't know of anything anyone can do," Raby said. "It's just a flat, vacant field."
The state's deadliest tornadoes in a decade ripped through four counties in central Texas - from Waco to Austin. Jarrell, a town of 1,000 about 40 miles north of Austin, was hit hardest - 31 residents dead, scores more injured, 50 homes leveled.
As many as nine people were missing in Jarrell, Department of Public Safety spokesman Mike Cox said this morning.
"It was like a big vacuum sucked everything up," said Max Johnson Jr., who visited the town after a funnel cloud blazed a swath of about a mile long and 200 yards wide.
Ray Westphal, manager of a Wendy's restaurant in Cedar Park about 25 miles away, said he was watching the darkened horizon with others in his parking lot "until the funnel started coming through the sky. Then everyone panicked."
The funnel looked about two inches tall at first, then it took up the entire horizon, Westphal said.
"As it got closer, building tops were flying around. It was picking cars right up into the air, flinging them everywhere."
Michael Carmona was driving home to Double Creek Estates when the storm arrived. The spot where his home once stood was nothing but a muddy lot. His wife, Ruth, and 13-year-old daughter, Satyn, were missing.
"It's gone. Everything's gone," Carmona said.
Williamson County Sheriff Ed Richards was amazed.
"Houses were literally picked up and torn into pieces, scattered for miles," he said.
Hearses trickled in as rescue workers began retrieving bodies at Double Creek. Stunned residents covered in mud wandered around in the rain, crying and consoling each other.
Thirty of Double Creek's own were confirmed dead at a temporary morgue set up at the volunteer fire department, and rescue workers planned to search for survivors again at daybreak.
"You could hear all the volunteers calling out, hoping someone would answer," said Mark Johnson, whose father is pastor of the Jarrell Baptist Church. "But it was pretty quiet. There was wood and trash still up in the air, twirling, then it started hailing."
Pastor Max Johnson Sr. tried to comfort frightened children.
"It's hard to know what to say, because right now no one knows who's missing and who's dead," he said. "In a town this small, there's probably not one person who did not know someone killed in this tragedy."
Only three miles northeast of Double Creek Estates, the heart of town, which includes the school and other city buildings, was spared.
This is the second time in a few years Jarrell has been terrorized by a tornado. In 1989, a tornado killed one person and severely damaged or destroyed 35 homes and a dozen mobile homes.
"This is worse," resident Janeen Brock said. "It's going to be awful. They're going to have to bury so many people."
The tornadoes were the state's deadliest since 30 people died and 162 were injured in the far West Texas town of Saragosa on May 22, 1987. The two deadliest tornadoes in Texas history occurred in Waco on May 11, 1953, and in Goliad on May 18, 1902. Each storm killed 114 people.
Tornadoes struck elsewhere Tuesday, although not as severely.
In Austin, one person was killed when a tornado destroyed two homes around Lake Travis; a woman drowned in a creek during the storm.
In Cedar Park, part of a grocery store's roof was blown off, causing the building to collapse.