‘Everything was real quiet’

The smell of pine sap and freshly turned sod permeate the air less than 24 hours after a storm cut through Cass County near Domino at 11:30 p.m. on the evening of Monday, March 21, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. The National Weather Service in Shreveport, Louisiana, confirmed that it was in fact an EF-1 tornado with peak winds of 100 mph that cut a 200- yard swatch about two miles long, parallel to Highway 59 before jumping the road just north of Queen City.

Kacie Easley grew up on the winding County Road 3548 and lived on the same hill her whole life. She had been following the storm alerts on her phone that Monday night while her son and nephew were in bed.

“Everything was real quiet. Then I heard it whistle and the power line snapped,” said Kacie. “I hollered and as soon as my son left his bedroom a tree fell on it. All I could hear was glass shattering.”

Luckily, Kacie got her son, nephew and their dogs in her closet in time to save them from harm. They were able to rescue seven husky puppies that were under her son’s new futon where the tree rested.

Her parents, Bobby and Kathy Mauldin Easley, were at a church retreat in Oklahoma when a huge oak tree split their home in half, next door to Kacie’s house. Kathy’s mother, and Kacie’s granny, Jean Mauldin, also lives on the hill; only some of the siding was blown off the back of her home.

Up on the top of the hill, a single-wide trailer belonging to Kacie’s best friends, Wes and Amanda Dean, has been reduced to an upside-down pile of rubble. Amanda had been trapped underneath three layers of walls for over an hour while rescue personnel desperately tried to navigate the way in through downed power lines and trees blocking all the roads.

“Once it died down I could hear Wes hollering ‘Help, we can’t find Amanda,’” Kacie said, crying as she relived the moment. “It was all black outside and we couldn’t see anything. The barn was gone – it had been there 60 years or more. Storms have came through here, but nothing like this. A tornado came in 2019 but just got a few trees.”

“I was laying on the bed with my two dogs. The tornado warning was over, so I was walking from the bedroom to the living room and as soon as I got in the doorway, everything flipped and kept flipping,” said Amanda. “I could hear Wes calling for me, but I couldn’t move.”

Among the rescue units trying to get to her, Deputy-Reserve Eric White (who is also Fire District 2 Assistant Chief of County Emergency Services) gave up trying to navigate the hazardous roadways and took off on foot. Once he arrived at the Dean’s homeplace he was able to help neighbors rescue Amanda from underneath the rubble. She was taken to the hospital where they found a lot of bruises, but no broken bones.

“I’m so blessed,” said Amanda, who is staying in a camper at her parents’ house with Wes. “I’m okay, my husband is okay and my dogs are okay.”

Across the road, in another single-wide trailer, the John Brady family hunkered down to wait it out while the storm blew out every window of their home. “It’s crazy the way it hit some things and not others,” said John. “If we hadn’t been strapped down real good we would have ended up like them.”

Just down the road, Marty Lawrence recalls the eerie quiet. “It’s hard to describe. It’s like I could feel the house take two breaths and feel the difference in pressure in my ears,” he said. “I’ve never been there before, and it’s a place I don’t ever want to be in again.”

Although his house was untouched, the front yard was littered with tin, downed trees, and a Bowie Cass transformer that fed the Graphic Packaging plant a few miles to the east. His Ford Ranger pickup was totaled by a tree across the bed, just behind the back window.

Marty joined his neighbors digging through rubble to free Amanda from under her house. “I don’t see how that little dog of hers didn’t tear her up in all that flipping,” he said. “She was still holding it when we finally got to her.”

Further down 3548 Alan Keithley was thankful his wife wasn’t home at the time the huge tree crashed through the house. “We were actually in the middle of a big remodel anyway,” he said, while looking over the destruction on his property.

Across the “old Texarkana highway (CR 3659)”, on CR 3658 toward US Highway 59, the gate to the Big 10 Hunting Club road was ripped up, concrete and all, and thrown many yards. Huge tree trunks, freshly cut, lined both sides of the blacktop road and barn tin decorated the treetops that are still standing.

Eugene Stanton, who has lived on the same property for most of his long life, sat on his front porch almost obscured by fallen trees. “I’ve seen lots of storms, but nothing like this before,” he said.

Across 59, along CR 3663 and 3664, the scenery is the same. At one time, Bernadette Brown had offered to buy a 200 lb., 3-foot-wide circular sawmill blade from a neighbor on the hill. She and her husband were amazed to find the blade in their front yard on Tuesday morning – it had flown through the air close to the length of a football field.

For Cass County Precinct Commissioner Paul Cothren and his four employees, clean up started before the sun came up Tuesday morning and they are still working, alongside various electric company contractors. He estimated it will take “weeks” to have the area clear of debris and electricity poles completely replaced.

“My biggest concern at the moment is that I have $140,000 in the budget for road repair, but now it’s going to storm cleanup,” he said. “I’ve got to get the trees out of the roadways and hauled off, or I’ll have to put them back on the property they came from.”

Crunching the numbers for disaster cleanup is nothing new for him. Since being elected, Paul has seen the prolonged ice storm of 2000, a drought, the Bear Creek fire, last year’s unusual snowfall, and numerous high-wind storms.

“Last year I had $100,000 to cover $900,000 of snow damage,” he recalled. “The main thing I am stressing to everyone right now is to report any damage you have – no matter how small you think it is – even if you have insurance.”

The reporting Paul is speaking of is the Individual State of Texas Assessment Tool (iSTAT) damage survey (https://damage. tdem.texas.gov). By filling out the survey, you can help determine the amount of government funding the county receives to go toward road maintenance and storm cleanup.

“We have GOT to have that information,” he stressed. “The county needs this data in order to trigger state and federal funding.”

Meanwhile, some of the residents of CR 3548 are dealing with massive cleanups, lack of electricity, and being temporarily displaced. The Easleys and the Deans had no insurance and their homes are unsalvageable. Kacie and her son are staying at the Best Western in Atlanta. The Deans are staying in a camper in her mothers’ front yard. Both families belong to GT Church, who is collecting donations for them.

“We don’t need clothing – right now we need help with housing and food,” said Kacie. “God was watching over us. It could have been so much worse.”