SAN ANTONIO — The city of Hondo took a direct hit from the massive storm Wednesday night.
You wouldn’t know it, but a pile of twisted metal on a side street was once a roof that sat on top of Zee’s Grocery Store. A sign from the store was blown into the yard of a house across the street. Thankfully nobody was hurt, but they’ve got a lot of cleaning up to do.
“The roof came off last night it probably happened around 7:30, 7:45," said Davis Camacho who works at God’s Country Primary Home Care. It is in the same building right next to Zee’s. Even though he wasn’t here when the storm hit, he felt it coming just minutes before. Camacho added, “When I was closing the air pressure changing in the building the walls rattling and you could hear the roof kind of groaning.”
At both Zee’s and God’s Country, windows were blown out. The lights for the sign by the road were no longer on the sign itself, but on the ground with wires strewn from the sign all the way down.
Camacho says damage like this from a storm is brand new for him.
“I lived out in West Texas and I’ve never seen anything like this," he said. "It hasn’t happened to me at least.”
Further down the highway, chainsaws were a familiar scene. People were cleaning up branches, leaves and massive tree trunks.
At a Sonic the 'Enter' sign was knocked over. That’s where Johnny, who is a roofer from San Antonio, stopped for lunch. He came to Hondo this morning to get repairs done.
“It’s crazy. I hate to say it like this, but I’m on this side of things where it benefits what I do. It’s a reaction from a disaster but I’m here to help,” he said.
He says he's never seen damage like this before, either.
“It’s new, it’s new. I wasn’t expecting this. I don’t think anybody was but here we are so we will see what we can do to clean this mess up," he said.
Many businesses in town were closed Thursday including God’s and Zee’s. Camacho told us all they wanted to do was clean up enough to be able to leave the businesses secure until they can get repairs done and re-open.