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Northern Burnet County was hit hard by severe weather Thursday night, but nowhere was hit worse than Bertram.

“There’s not a street in Bertram that doesn’t have damage on it, not one,” said Bertram Police Chief David Caudle. ”Every street in Bertram has some damage, some more than others. We have 100 year old oak trees that have been blown down and snapped and stuff. It’s an ordeal.”

A perfect time, you might think to use the city’s recently purchased backhoe in the cleanup. Unfortunately it was stored in the old fire hall on Vaughn Street and the roof and back portion of the building collapsed when a tree fell on it.

Bertram Volunteer Fire Department President, William Kennedy, looked at the former fire department crushed under a tree, where firefighters once gathered.

"If we were still here, that would have been where everybody would have been," Kennedy said.

The collapsed fire house fell on a foot of Bertram's water tower, prompting Kennedy to believe a structural engineer might need to take a look at the integrity of one of the town's old landmarks.

The fire hall wasn’t the only tree-damaged structure in town.

“Trees everywhere look like they’ve just been plucked up out of the ground,” said Mayor JoAnn Stephens. “ A lot of streets were blocked last night because of the trees being down.”

Caudle said despite the ferocity of the storm, damage was comparatively light.

“We’ve only had a couple of houses that basically the people are not going to be able to stay in,” he said.

Stephens said a city water line was broken by an uprooted tree last night. A gas line was also ruptured, she said. Trains couldn’t move on the railroad because a downed power line was laying on the tracks, she said.

“It could have been a lot worse, haven’t heard of anyone being hurt,” Stephens said.

“We’re going to get all the major things taken care of that we see, then we’re going to go house to house to see if anyone has any damage we haven’t heard of yet.”

Unfortunately, volunteers aren’t the only ones going door to door in Bertram.

“We had some who have been taken advantage of already,” Caudle said. “They paid for some stuff that they shouldn’t have and didn’t have to pay for, some older people.

Things were a little better in Burnet,but only in comparison.

Burnet Municipal Airport manager Crista Goble Bromley said one airplane was flipped over and a second plane incurred damage on its nose when hey became airborne because of he high winds. Initial reports showed widespread wind damage, particularly with uprooted trees.

Christa Craven, who lives in the Galloway-Hammond RV Park in Burnet said she was in her trailer when the winds began to shake it.

"It blew it to where it was about 45 degrees," she said. "When it sat back down I went to the (Galloway Hammond Recreation Center) building.

The winds rolled Cravens' trailer completely over and left it a heap of debris.

Karl Piehl, another RV park resident, had his trailer blown over on its side. Piehl said he left about 20 minutes before his trailer was blown over. He sought safety from predicted hail at a car wash across U.S. 281 from the park.

"My daughter always worries about me living in here," he said. "I told her not to worry about it. When you see these things on the news, it's always a mobile home park, not an RV park."

That wasn't true by a long shot Thursday night.

Carolyn Harker and her husband had pulled into the RV park for an overnight stay in their motor home as they were headed back to Calliham, near Corpus Christi.

Harker said the winds began to buffet the trailer and eventually it blew over on its side.

Harker had a bandage on her arm from a laceration. Her husband, she said, was at Seton Highland Lakes Medical Center for X-rays. There was no report on his condition.

Initial reports indicated no serious injuries from the storm.

Several other trailers were also blown over during the storm.



In Bertram, trees were uprooted and power lines were down near the train station. There was also a gas leak reported in that area and a freight train was stalled across the railroad crossing about 10 p.m.

In Llano County, the sheriff’s office reported some high winds but no damage.

Joe Baskin with the National Weather Service, stationed in New Braunfels, said 80 mph winds were clocked in Granite Shoals, and reports of 60 mph winds were common throughout Burnet County.

Debbie Bradbury, who lives on 4-acres just south of Burnet, said “my husband and (others) are getting the pump shed out of the swimming pool right now. I never experienced anything like that,” referring to the intensity of the storm. She said the storm “took down four giant trees. It took our fence down.”

The weather service issued flash flood warnings Thursday night for Llano and Burnet counties as the storm moved into Leander and Cedar Park in Williamson County, where a tornado was reported.

Unofficial rain totals ranged from about 3 inches north of Burnet to about half an inch in Granite Shoals in southern Burnet County.

Unofficial rain totals from the LCRA were lower:

Burnet, 1.17; Bertram, 1.07; Buchanan Dam, .68;

Kingsland .17; Llano, .57; Marble Falls, .77; Marble Falls Backbone Creek, .94; Spicewood .58-.68; Tow .98.

/>More information will be posted to this web site as it becomes available.