Search for victims ends after deadly tornadoes

School, flights canceled
After the tornado passed, neighbors poured onto the darkened streets checking for anyone who needed help, said Eglanteina Alamillo, 20. “You could hear everyone was walking around and helping people get out of the trailers,” she said.

Navjas said he and other rescuers worked as long as they could Tuesday night. He finally went home for a couple hours of sleep after his flashlight went out around 4 a.m.

School was canceled Wednesday in Eagle Pass, a city of 26,000 about 150 miles southwest of San Antonio. Like most border towns, it is heavily dependent on its relationship with its Mexican neighbor. It also depends on revenue from the Kickapoo tribe’s Lucky Eagle casino.

“These are people that have built their homes a little at a time,” Aranda said. “They probably don’t have a mortgage, but they don’t have insurance either.”

American Airlines canceled about 200 flights because of weather in Dallas, spokesman Billy Sanez said. The airline also diverted about 80 flights bound for Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport to other airports.

Ken Capps, vice president of public affairs at the Dallas airport, said the flight control tower was temporarily evacuated Tuesday night but the airport remained open. Weather canceled 160 of about 950 departing flights Tuesday, and cots were provided for stranded passengers, airport officials said.

Storm whips through West
In Denton County, heavy winds blew the metal roof off a restaurant and damaged several mobile homes and a commercial building under construction, said Roland Asebedo, assistant chief for Denton County’s Emergency Services. No injuries were reported.

The storm system dumped heavy snow, rain and hail before roaring out of the West. Western and central Iowa received up to 3½ inches of rain, and in parts of Nebraska there were reports of as much as 5 inches.

In Colorado, six buses carrying at least 60 children were stranded after being unable to travel in the storm that dropped more than a foot of snow in about two hours, said Rob Finley, assistant fire marshall for El Paso County.

Children in those buses were all accounted for late Tuesday and had been rescued and taken to shelters opened in the county, about 80 miles south of Denver.

Whiteout conditions
While the sun was out in downtown Colorado Springs on Tuesday afternoon, there were whiteout conditions on the plains east of town where crews on Sno-Cats rescued dozens of motorists, said Lt. Clif Northam of the El Paso County sheriff’s office.

A tornado damaged several buildings near the small town of Wild Horse about 110 miles southeast of Denver, but no injuries were reported, the Cheyenne County Sheriff’s Department said.

“I was terrified,” said Wild Horse resident William Skinner, 47. “It was right there, by my neighbor’s, just about 200 feet away.”

Evergreen, Colo., in the foothills west of Denver, reported 16 inches of snow, and other foothills towns had up to 14 inches. Some schools were closed.

“There’s cars sliding off the roads everywhere,” said Rick Olde, owner of Olde’s Convenience Store in Evergreen. “A lot of people took their snow tires off a little early this year.”

Tumbling boulders, a fallen power line, accidents, slick pavement and poor visibility forced nearly a dozen road closures, including on Interstates 25 and 70.

Hail the diameter of a quarter hit parts of southeastern Colorado, and authorities said some rural roads were blocked by flooding from heavy rain in northeast Colorado, northwest Kansas and southwest Nebraska.

In Nebraska, the U.S. Geological Survey reported Tuesday that most of its stream gauges along the Republic River were near or exceeded flood stage.

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