Ellis County community bands together to clean up storm damage

ELLIS COUNTY, Texas - There is a long recovery ahead for parts of Ellis County hit hard by severe weather over the weekend.

One person died when the hurricane-force winds smashed windows, roofs and vehicles.

Storm damage across Ellis County

The clean-up continues in Ellis County from Saturday's severe weather that produced damaging winds and golf ball-sized hail.

In this neighborhood of Old Telco Road, landscaping crews were out early Monday morning, clearing out fallen tree limbs and debris.

"It's pretty bad in multiple areas. We've seen multiple trees on houses, a lot of roads being blocked and driveways," said Forest Summerhill with Forester Tree Care. "We've been out trying to help people get out of their driveways so they can at least get to where they need to go get food or whatever they need to do."

Overwhelmed homeowners are grateful for the help.

Rob Spencer was at his daughter's house to oversee the repairs. He says his neighbor's barn roof ended up in their pasture.

"We didn't have any warning go off. We live about six miles east of here on our ranch," he said.

Community bands together to help

Just to the north of Ennis, the Garrett Area Rural Volunteer Fire Department was in need of some help themselves.

Captain Mark Renfro says nearly 80% of calls for service are answered by volunteer fire departments in the area, so being out of service on Saturday wasn't ideal.

"When I got up here, all three bay doors were blown in the sides of the building on the east and west sides were blown out," he said. "It was a sight to behold."

The internet tower near the station was destroyed, causing an outage in parts of Ellis County.

Thankfully, the department had about 15 volunteers helping them out. They were able to board up the station in about seven hours.

"You see the community come alive when a disaster happens, so we're really thankful for that," said Renfro."