Sunday, May 3, 2009

Dallas Cowboy Training Facility Destroyed By Micro-Burst, Not Tornado

Monday Update At Bottom

Last night I was puzzled when I looked at my FeedJit blog stats and saw that a large number of people were being directed to my blog when looking for information about a tornado hitting the Dallas Cowboy Stadium.

I knew we'd had a storm or two and were under Tornado Warning. But, I had heard no tornado sirens.

When I pulled the wrapper off the Sunday paper I saw what had actually happened. It was not a tornado. And it was not the Dallas Cowboy Stadium that was hit by wind.

It was the Dallas Cowboy training facility at Valley Ranch. And the wind was of the micro-burst sort with winds around 65 mph. The micro-burst struck around 3:30 in the afternoon.

There were about 70 people inside the facility when the roof was ripped off and the walls crashed down. There were 12 injuries, of which 10 were taken by ambulance to area hospitals, 7 to Los Colinas Medical Center in Irving and 3 to Parkland Memorial in Dallas. Two of the injured were able to make it as walk-ins to a Baylor medical facility.

I have experienced a micro-burst wind storm twice. Once where I am right now and another time experiencing the aftermath when a micro-burst destroyed most of what had been the Balloon Festival at Midlothian Airport. Micro-bursts are amazingly powerful, sort of scary, sort of exciting. I guess they are sort of a tornado-lite type phenomenon.

Monday, May 4 Update: Of the 12 injured by the micro-burst caused training facility collapse, scouting assistant, Rich Behm sustained a fractured spine that severed his spinal cord, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. He had surgery at Parkland Memorial, in Dallas, the night of the collapse and is in stable condition.

Dallas Cowboys like Tony Romo and Jason Whitten were there to support the injured and their families. Dallas Cowboy owner, Jerry Jones, left the Kentucky Derby early to get back to Dallas to see the injured and their families, along with Cowboy coach, Wade Phillips. Jones and Phillips returned on Sunday, along with the other coaches and players.

2 comments:

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