By R.V. Baugus
IAVM staff and fellow tenants at World Headquarters came together in an unexpected way on the afternoon of Tuesday, April 3 as severe weather that spawned an unofficial 15 tornados across the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex resulted in a brief but major hail pounding of the building and cars in the parking lot.
The skies darkened shortly after 2 p.m. and then the rain started, followed almost immediately by hail that started at golf ball-size and quickly became the size of a baseball. Tenants on the second floor of the building quickly came downstairs and huddled with IAVM staff in a storage room area to take cover as the hail could be heard blasting the roof of the building.
“We had checked out the weather on the Internet, and then some other tenants on the floor told us to go downstairs,” said Priscilla Castro of long-time tenant Becton Dickinson. “Really the (warning) sirens kind of gave it away.
“It was the first time in 10 years here that we have had hail damage. I know we’ve had some hail before but not like this.”
Once the rain and hail subsided, employees made their way to the parking lot to inspect the damage on their cars. At least five cars had windows fully knocked out from the hail while others suffered hood and roof damage along with some cracked windshields.
“This was a bad storm, but we also saw that it brought out the best in people in the building helping each other,” said IAVM Chief Operating Officer Steve Flamm. “Everyone had genuine concern for each other and immediately began helping those whose vehicles had the most damage.”
Before some of those damaged vehicles could have their missing windows taped with cardboard or cloth to cover the missing window, the rains returned and everyone scampered inside to safety yet one more time. This time, fortunately, it was only rain.
“It could have been worse,” said Flamm. “A lot of people in the area have been impacted, but we are thankful this was not even more severe. The spirit of people helping people was really on display during the storm.”