Ten years ago Friday night, a deadly and destructive tornado outbreak tore through North Texas.
“There’s a joke that Rowlett has a Rowlett bubble, and nothing happens in Rowlett. Well, we were proved wrong in 2015,” Rowlett firefighter Troy Ottinger said.
It proved to be the strongest tornado in recent North Texas history. The Sunnyvale–Garland–Rowlett tornado was an EF-4, with estimated winds of 166 to 200 miles per hour.
“I remember since it was a day after Christmas, I remember seeing devastation, but presents everywhere. I remember seeing Legos, and it seemed like every other house,” Wayne Dornich, driver and engineer with the Rowlett Fire Department, said.
Ottinger also remembers the helping hands that descended hours after the storm hit.
“Once the sun rose, you saw people from all over the city just come out and join together in just side by side, picking up belongings, picking up presents, picking up loved ones keys, pictures, valuables, Bibles,” Ottinger said.
The tornado outbreak produced 12 confirmed tornadoes across eight counties. Thirteen people lost their lives, more than half of the fatalities happened near I-30 and the President George Bush Turnpike.
“Out of the tornado came a tremendous effort in our community and really a lot of unity where we came together to help recover, to help overcome some of the challenges that we had,” Rowlett Mayor Jeff Winget said.
Winget says the storm leveled homes and displaced people for months. What he saw rise from the wreckage was a community that came together to lift up and support the city.
“It’s a much tighter-knit group than it used to be. We used to not know our neighbors,” Steve Walker, President of Rowlett Strong, said.
Walker says the organization, born from the tragedy, helped raise funds for relief. Today, it continues to raise money for North Texas first responders to thank them for their heroic efforts in the tornado aftermath.
Friday night, those first responders will reunite with some of the lives they saved ten years ago.
“It’s going to be neat to see some of those that we actually worked beside, those citizens that were affected, those citizens that were trapped, that were able to be able to get out,” Ottinger said.
The Tornado Remembrance Ceremony is happening Friday night at the Schrade Bluebonnet Park in Rowlett from 6:00 p.m. to 6:56 p.m., marking the time the tornado hit the community ten years ago.