TORNADO FLATTENS TEXAS TOWN; 28 DIE.

Saragosa, Texas (AP) -- A tornado that swept down with little warning flattened this tiny town, killing at least 28 people, many of them children at a pre-school graduation, authorities said.
Some 121 people were injured, and three were missing after the tornado struck Friday night in the town of 180 people, Reeves County Sheriff RAUL FLOREZ said.
"The little town is pretty much destroyed," said Monahans Assistant Fire Chief DOUG CURBOW.
By mid-morning in a heavy rain, rescue workers appeared to have ended their search for bodies in the rubble of the community building where the pre-school ceremony had been held. Dogs were used to uncover the bodies.
Moments before the twister struck this west Texas farm town around 8 p.m., parents frantically pulled their children from the stage of the community hall where the graduation was taking place and shoved them under tables and benches, a witness said.
FLOREZ said there had been some reports of severe weather in the area but no tornado warnings. "It was a surprise to these people here," he said.
He estimated about 80 percent of the town was destroyed.
Earlier, Pecos Police Chief ED KREVIT had said one of his officers at the scene reported 37 dead, many trapped inside the hall.
Department of Public Safety spokesman DAVID WELLS said there could be more dead in the fields but that rescuers initially were hampered by bad weather and darkness. Saragosa was without power and the roads were impassable, spokesman MIKE COX said earlier. A school bus was converted into a morgue.
"There is no structure left in town," said WELLS. "The stone building was filled with 5-year-olds and their parents attending the ceremony."
About 100 people were inside the community hall when the tornado leveled the building, according to JOSE RODRIGUEZ, who said he was attending the ceremony for pre-kindergarten youngsters in a government Head Start program.
"A parent yelled a tornado was coming, and parents started grabbing their kids from the stage," said ELODIA GARCIA, 26.
"They told us to take cover, then the windows started shattering, the walls started coming down. It fell on us, but the Lord was with us," MS. GARCIA said.
MS. GARCIA and her 6-year-old daughter, mother and father sustained only minor injuries. She said they were pulled from the rubble by volunteers.
Hospitals in Pecos, Fort Stockton, Monahans and Odessa said 108 injured people arrived for treatment.
"The hospital at Pecos ... is all beyond capacity," said RUSS KYLER, assistant administrator at Medical Center Hospital in Odessa about 70 miles from here. "The helicopters are trying to get in here, but the weather is so bad that they can't come it."
The tornado came from one of a series of intense thunderstorms that drenched the western portion of the south Plains.
JOHNNY MORGAN, 43, of Midland said he and his family saw the tornado from their car.
"We ... watched it grow. I got to the edge of Saragosa and came right by the thing, and it turned around the other way," he said in a telephone interview from Reeves County Hospital, where he was aiding rescue efforts.
"Buildings were flattened. Cars were strewn about. Power lines were down," said MORGAN. "As we watched it, the stem became wider and wider and darker. As we got to the edge of Saragosa, I really became frightened by it."
The worst single tornado in Texas history hit Wichita Falls on April 10, 1979. It killed 42, injured 1,740 and destroyed more than 3,000 homes. An estimated 20,000 were left homeless.

Oelwein Daily Register Missouri 1987-05-23
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Researched and Transcribed by Stu Beitler. Thank you, Stu!