Family recalls night of deadly tornado outbreak
Paul Baker stands on top of the roof of his house that was destroyed by a series of tornadoes April 29.
Photos by Brad Blakemore
The past seven months have been anything but ordinary for Van Zandt Newspaper page designer Kelly Baker and her husband Paul. The couple relocated to a new home along VZ County Road 4104 on Nov. 20, 2016, and just earlier this year, the couple learned that they would be having their first child together after years of attempting to conceive.
Like it has done with countless others, Saturday night’s deadly East Texas tornado outbreak turned into another life changing event for the Bakers, demolishing the couple’s home as they were huddled in a storm shelter with family members close by.
“We knew storms were coming and my mother is overprotective, especially since I’m expecting. Anytime a storm comes through that possibly has severe weather, I’ll leave my car at home so it’s under a carport and she’ll come and get me. She lives about a quarter of a mile from me and they have a storm shelter. Every tornado warning we got said possible but not likely so it was not really going to lead you to believe that there’s a super severe threat,” recalled Baker. “We watched the radar constantly so when we saw that there was some tornadic activity in the Gun Barrel area, I was told to go down into the storm shelter. I went down about 4:30. The first tornado hit somewhere about 5 p.m. Between the first and second storm it completely cleared up like it was going to be a normal day again. The sky started turning a yellowish green again so we knew another one was coming.”
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