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A powerful thunderstorm downburst swept through San Antonio Friday night, bringing destructive straight-line winds, heavy rain, lightning and flash flooding to parts of the city.
Winds of 50 to 65 mph toppled trees and utility poles across the city, leaving more than 112,000 CPS Energy customers without electricity at the peak of the storm. Tens of thousands remained without power Saturday as residents began cleaning up and assessing the damage.
On the city’s West Side, the morning after the storm brought a different kind of quiet — broken by the sound of chainsaws, generators and neighbors helping one another.
In the neighborhoods near Zarzamora Street, streets were littered with fallen tree limbs and entire trees. Some had landed on homes and vehicles. Others had brought down power lines, leaving residents without electricity as temperatures climbed toward 100 degrees.
For Henry Lee Parrilla, the storm brought a particularly heavy loss.
A roughly 100-year-old pecan tree fell onto his house on Morales Street — a home that had been his mother's — smashing part of the roof.
As workers on the roof of the house cut apart the massive tree — chunk-by-chunk — on Saturday morning, Parrilla looked over the damage.
“There you go — Mother Nature,” he said.
While the sweat-soaked men worked on the tree, other residents were trying to figure out how to get through the heat without electricity.
On Monterey Street, Johnny Garcia and his family set up a table in the front yard and prepared to eat fried chicken from Bill Miller takeout. Sitting outside offered some relief from the heat, with shade and a breeze providing what the house could not.
“Yeah, it’s incredibly hot right now — luckily, we’ve got shade and everything. And the breeze feels good,” Garcia said. “Right now, we’re just glad to be here right now honestly because we just had the roof torn off the house.”
The storm had blown the roof off the back side of his mother-in-law’s home.
Garcia said family members had gathered to help clean up and begin dealing with the damage.
“My brothers, my nephews. They’re here helping me out, cleaning out the rooms — you know, remodel,” he said.
Garcia wasn't at the house when the worst of the storm hit. He was at home a couple of blocks away Friday night when he received a call from his mother-in-law.
“She was saying, ‘Hey — the whole house is shaking,’” Garcia said.
He came over to check on the family and found extensive damage.
“Sure enough, her room, the restroom, washroom and the kitchen were just torn apart,” he said. “That’s what we’re dealing with right now.”
For families whose homes were still standing, the loss of electricity presented its own challenge.
A mother who did not want to give her name sat outside with her three children. With no electricity, the family was trying to stay cool on the porch.
She told TPR in Spanish that they had no electricity. “No tenemos electricidad,” she said.
She added that she was worried the power might not be restored for days. She was also concerned about whether her children would be able to go to school Monday.
She said the school is only four blocks away and that unless the power could be restored, there won't be classes.
The storm also forced local businesses to improvise. Without electricity, some business owners had to decide whether to close (many in the area were closed on Saturday) or find another way to keep going.
At the Misfit barbershop on Martin Street, owner Juan Martinez chose to keep working — even if it meant moving his barber chair outside.
“It’s a hard time, but you want to look good,” Martinez said.
Closing wasn't something Martinez seriously considered.
“I’m a business owner and as long as I’m out here showing my guys — power, no power — we can still do it,” he said. “We can still do it.”
Martinez moved a barber’s chair outside the shop, beneath an awning that provided some shade, and went to work.
There was a little wind, he said, and that was enough to keep going.
His customers, Martinez said, were taking a similar approach.
“It’s hard, it’s crazy, it’s difficult — but at the end of the day all they say is we gotta roll with the punches. We gotta keep positive.”
But the damage around the neighborhood was impossible to ignore.
“These trees are old — and you see them and the trees are knocked over the vehicles — knocked out powerlines — there’s a couple of houses where the roofs are caved in — roofs are taken off — it’s just madness right now,” Martinez said.
Still, he said the West Side has something that can help residents through difficult times: a sense of community.
“I feel like as a community we can pull together,” he said.
For Martinez, that spirit is tied to the neighborhood itself. He was born and raised on the West Side and said its history and roots give residents a sense of who they are.
“That’s what I love about the West Side,” he said. “I’m born and raised over here. The West Side has history. You have roots down here. You have a foundation of who you are.”
The West Side has weathered storms before, Martinez said, and residents have always found a way to pick up the pieces and keep moving.
This time, that meant cutting up fallen trees, cleaning damaged homes, finding ways to stay cool without electricity — and, for one local barber, moving a chair outside and continuing to work.
The storm left plenty of damage behind.
But for Martinez, it didn't take away the West Side's determination to carry on — and to still look good while doing it.
Yvette Benavides contributed to this report.
