CORPUS CHRISTI, Tx — A Southside resident and her family evacuated their home after a thunderstorm early Monday morning brought down a tree and a power line.
"Me and my husband were woken up like around 1:30 from a loud bang and it our whole house shook and I thought it was just thunder but as soon as that loud sound happened the electricity came off," Veronica Ramirez said.
Ramirez said the thunder was very loud and sounded like a train. According to the National Weather Service, the storm in the Southside had winds of at least 55 miles per hour.
"That's the tree that fell over, and it fell over to this side, if you see right here, it hit our pole," Ramirez said.
The storm prompted the family to gather their belongings and leave.
"We didn't want to stay here, so we ended up rushing out and just pretty much being displaced from our home," Ramirez said. "We went elsewhere to take cover."
After returning home, Ramirez found her power was still out, even as neighboring homes had their electricity restored. The family called 911 about the downed power line and also contacted AEP.
"Our electrical source comes right directly from there, and they're all down if you can tell that they're pretty tight," Ramirez said.
While KRIS 6 was on scene, the power had yet to come back on. We reached out to AEP to see if it could help speed up the process. Shortly after we left, AEP came and helped put the power line safely away.
Despite the scare, Ramirez said she is glad her family acted quickly.
"We weren't prepared because this has never happened to us before, but because it happened now, we will know, okay, we did good in our timing to get to the house on time," Ramirez said. "That's what I could take away from that, that we worked as a team."
Ramirez said moving forward, she will keep her trees trimmed and urges other neighbors to do the same to help prevent storm damage.
