A San Antonio woman says she was trapped inside her car as Friday night’s powerful storms tore through the city’s West Side. After a power line came crashing down on her vehicle, she’s questioning why her neighborhood wasn’t warned about what was coming.
Jenna Garza, 20, had just returned from grocery shopping with her boyfriend when conditions quickly deteriorated near her home just west of downtown. Garza said she had received flash flood alerts but nothing that made her expect what was about the happen next.
After dropping her boyfriend off at his truck, Garza stayed inside her car to wait for the heavy rain to ease. Less than a minute later, she looked up and could no longer see what was in front of her.
“All I see is white. I can’t see anything else,” Garza told MySA.
Garza called her boyfriend, who told her he couldn’t see either and that his truck was beginning to lift. She said she experienced the same thing.
“My car started lifting up as well, like at least three or four feet off the ground,” Garza said. “It slammed back to the ground.”
As she prepared to get out of her car, a power line snapped and fell onto the vehicle, breaking through its back window.
Garza escaped without injury, but said her boyfriend was burned on his leg from a power line.
The storm also left significant damage around her neighborhood. Garza said power lines were down across her street, portions of her grandmother’s and neighbor’s roofs were ripped away and a large piece of metal roofing from a home about a block away landed in her backyard.
Graza said she believes she was caught in a tornado but officials with the National Weather Service said what San Antonio experienced on Friday, August 28, was a downburst which can produce powerful winds like it did that night.
“I was inside of it. My car was lifting up and wobbling, getting pushed around,” Garza said. “I know some people won’t believe me, but I just felt kind of frustrated that there were no sirens right here in 78207 or tornado alerts. All we got was flash flood.”
Since tornadoes are extremely rare in San Antonio, the city does not have sirens.
The National Weather Service told MySA it found no evidence of a tornado in the area. NWS meteorologist Cory Van Pelt said the agency received no tornado reports and saw no tornadic signatures on radar, instead observing widespread straight-line wind damage.
Regardless, those winds were powerful enough to create dangerous conditions. Van Pelt said some gusts may have reached 70 to 75 mph and confirmed winds that strong could lift objects like Garza described.
“Straight-line winds could do quite a bit of damage,” Van Pelt told MySA.
For Garza, whatever caused it, the experience was terrifying.
“It was extremely terrifying,” Garza said. “It just happened out of nowhere.”