Laguna Heights resident shares progress in tornado recovery efforts
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It's been one week since a deadly tornado heavily hit the Laguna Heights community, killing one person.
One family gives an update on how their recovery efforts have been going.
Francisco Silva and his family of seven live in Laguna Heights. A week ago, part of his home was damaged by debris from the tornado.
Related story: Laguna Heights family working to repair home after deadly tornado damages it
"You felt the house shake a little bit, and then you hear the debris in the house and stuff. It was horrible man," Silva said.
Over the last week, the family has gone through a lot of physical stress as they've cleaned up the damage. They also spent the week repairing the addition to their home that Silva built with his father.
They consider themselves fortunate, thanks to Silva's employers they got financial help with those repairs.
"My job, the Laguna Water District, donated some money to us, and to some other families that are employees that needed help. At least we can buy material for the fence to put up and help my grandma out with the roof and replace the sheet rock and all that stuff on the inside so," Silva said.
Silva's family is among dozens of families fixing damages to their home. At least 30 others lost their homes, and needed to find a temporary place to live.
"Salvation Army is paying for hotels so that people could stay there temporarily. And then we are picking that up and eventually also hoping they find some permanent rental property. Then we would be able to help them with their rent payments as well," Cameron County Fiscal Analyst Supervisor Victor Treviño said.
The Salvation Army and Cameron County say their focus right now is emergency living. Treviño says throughout the week they've had roughly 60 families come out to the community center, which has a capacity of 25 people.
"Today we've had about 35 people here, but we're going to be able to place them all in hotels so that they won't even have to sleep here tonight at the shelter," Trevino said.
Treviño says in time he's hoping they'll be able to get permanent housing.
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