A team from the National Weather Service confirms an EF-1 tornado hit part of Sebastian County, including the community of Riverdale, Wednesday night.
The area was hit by the strong winds around 10 p.m. Riverdale is located northeast of Lavaca on Highway 96 North.
Residents were working to assess and clean up the debris Thursday morning.
"There's a couple trailer houses that got damaged," said Ed Westbrook who lives in the area. "One of them was completely destroyed."
Westbrook was in disbelief when he saw the damage in his yard Thursday morning. At least a dozen trees were uprooted, but there was minimal damage to his house. "We were really fortunate," he said.
Just down the road, J.A. Fisher said he could hear the tornado "roaring" towards his house. "Like a big freight train coming through," he said.
Fisher's brother Donild said the strong tornado winds forced their back door open.
“Then I heard my back wall go down in the garage," said Donild. "I really thought it blew the door off. It didn’t blow it completely off, but it sure done a lot of damage to it.”
The Fisher brothers said they plan to fix the damage to their garage themselves. Donild said he feels lucky because the damage could have been worse.
"It could’ve torn it all to pieces," he said. "It really could’ve, and I was scared that’s what it was going to do.”
