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Three minutes could’ve made the difference between life and death as Alvin Dunbar and his family drove home Sunday night, making the trek from an event in Fort Worth to the northwest Dallas apartment complex where they lived.
By the time they pulled into the Southwind Apartments near Walnut Hill Lane on Brockbank Drive, a tornado was nearly on top of them. Alvin began to feel something like sand tearing into his skin as the wind picked up.
With no time to make it inside the apartment, all of them — Karina and Kenneth Knighten, as well as Kenneth’s parents, Alvin and Christie, Alvin’s sister, her boyfriend and her two young children — wedged between two walls in the nearby carport, creating a human shield around the 6- and 7-year-old kids. It was a last-ditch effort to save themselves.
Alvin witnessed the tornado himself — all 30 seconds of it — as glass and debris ripped through the air around them, lacerating his son Kenneth’s back and slamming a black Chevy Tahoe into the Jeep they’d just run from.
“If we would’ve waited three more minutes, we would’ve all died in there,” Karina Knighten said.
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Nine tornadoes ripped through North Texas late Sunday. The strongest left a 15-mile path of destruction in its wake, devastating parts of northwest Dallas before moving northeast into Richardson.
Alvin and his family spent the night in the apartment where they’ve lived for 10 years — now roofless and ruined, with rain pouring in.
After the storm, several people identifying themselves as the apartment’s management told residents the complex’s owners were “pulling out,” Dunbar said. Residents were given several hours to gather their belongings.
“We have no clue what’s going on anymore,” Christie Dunbar said.
Residents aren’t sure what to do next. They say they haven’t received clear communication from management other than that they needed to gather their things and leave. It isn’t even clear to the residents who’s in charge.
Activist Carlos Quintanilla visited more than four dozen residents at Southwind on Wednesday. He said he plans to take legal action to ensure residents are reimbursed for rent they had already paid for the month. No lawsuit had been filed late Wednesday.
“The sad part about this is that the owner’s going to get compensated for his losses,” Quintanilla said. “And they lose everything.”
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Recourse for residents
Dallas real estate attorney Rachel Khirallah said a landlord’s responsibility to tenants after a natural disaster largely depends on what’s written in the lease, so it’s important for residents to check the specific language.
Most contracts will have carve-outs for “acts of God” that absolve a landlord of responsibility to provide a renter with a habitable place to live in the event of an unforeseeable natural disaster, she said.
Renter’s insurance is generally the best hope for residents, Khirallah said.
Several Southwind residents who spoke to the The Dallas Morning News said they did not have renter’s insurance. Many people simply can’t afford it, said Sandy Rollins of the Texas Tenants’ Union.
“While renter’s insurance is obviously a useful thing to have for anybody, the reality is, some people can’t afford things much more basic than that,” Rollins said.
People living in apartment complexes aren’t there because they have deep pockets, Rollins said — “they’re there because they don’t.”
The Texas Apartment Association Lease — a commonly used leasing contract for apartment dwellers — includes language that gives the landlord the right to terminate the lease with five days’ notice in cases where there’s catastrophic damage, Rollins said.
Beyond that, tenants are only entitled to a prorate or refund of rent if they have to leave before the end of a month, as well as refunding of the security deposit, Rollins said.
“We stared death in the face and walked away from it,” Alvin Dunbar said. “Nobody can predict that this would happen. But if we have to go through this, the apartment needs to give somebody some kind of help.”
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Reaching the hardest hit areas
American Red Cross spokeswoman Renee Felton said the organization had been out to the Southwind Apartments since the storms hit late Sunday, though some residents said they didn’t see any aid organizations at the site before Wednesday.
The Red Cross has sent its emergency response vehicles to areas hit hard by the storm, offering cleanup supplies such as tarps, shovels, rakes, work gloves and trash bags.
The Salvation Army heard about residents’ plight on Wednesday thanks to a heads-up from the Red Cross, spokesman Pat Patey said.
The organization, which provides food and drinks for disaster victims, was set to bring 50 meals to Southwind in the afternoon, he said.
Both agencies have had difficulty reaching some of the areas hit worst by the tornadoes.
“The thing that we experienced yesterday is that some of the hardest-hit areas we were not able to get into because the police still had them blocked off, most likely because of downed power lines,” Patey said.
But that’s changing day by day.
“We are able to get into areas that we weren’t able to get into yesterday,” he said.
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How to help and get help
The State Bar of Texas has a toll-free legal hotline to connect callers with legal aid providers in their area to help with issues such as replacing lost documents, insurance questions, landlord-tenant issues and consumer-protection matters.
For help in English, Spanish or Vietnamese, call 800-504-7030.
Some people may qualify for legal help through the online Q&A service at texaslegalanswers.org. For more information, visit texasbar.com/disaster.
The Red Cross is running the respite center at the Bachman Recreation Center in northwest Dallas, for people who need a safe place to go. It is open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. for people to get food, drinks and power.
For sheltering needs, the organization is asking people to call 211, a spokeswoman for the Red Cross said.
People can call 1-800-REDCROSS (1-800-733-2767) for disaster help.
The North Texas Food Bank and the Salvation Army are other organizations offering assistance to people in need.
People who want to donate to the Dallas’ emergency assistance fund may do so here, and donations can be made to Dallas ISD’s tornado relief efforts here.