Austin American-Statesman from Austin, Texas • 24

Austin American-Statesman A24 Sunday. May 24, 1987 Saragosa: A Texas tragedy iV ft fcrt- i I a Sri. 1 I -vtJ. 1 rTV 5' I jdh. Staff photos by Tom Lankes A flag flies at half-staff Saturday amid rubble in Saragosa as workers rummage through it.

Staff photo by Jay Godwin A man finds suitcase among household items strewn in the wreckage of a house in Saragosa. Neighbors help with recovery Communities treat survivors wy vu AP hi'. I. Hospital representative Nancy Bitolas said more than 100 patients were treated for injuries ranging from minor scrapes and bruises to head injuries, broken bones and internal injuries. "We heard that we had four patients coming in for treatment," Bitolas said.

"Then we heard that 11 were coming, then 30. And after that 30 had arrived, we were told to expect 30 more." Bitolas said the lobby of the small stucco hospital was converted into a makeshift treatment center, as were the X-ray rooms and laboratories. "Every nook and cranny was filled with beds, and every bed had a patient in it," she said. Bitolas said the hospital was flooded with calls from around the country, as concerned relatives sought information about Saragosa residents. Information was scarce, she said.

Telephone contact with Saragosa was cut off. Patients were being transported to hospitals in Odessa, Mona-hans, Fort Stockton, Midland and Alpine. By Saturday afternoon, though, the patients remaining at Reeves County Memorial Hospital were in stable condition, Bitolas said. At the morgue, information was scarce. A few police officers, weary from the recovery efforts at Saragosa, worked to keep the parking lot clear for relatives seeking to identify family members.

As he stood in the parking lot of the Pecos Funeral Home, Tersero described Saragosa as an "in-between place, sort of a stopover between Balmorhea and Pecos." And although his beat in Pecos was more than 30 miles away, Tersero said he was familiar with the quiet town. "Of course, the last time I went there, there were houses. There's nothing there now." By Scot Meyer American-Statesman Staff PECOS The tornado that 9truck nearby Saragosa left Pecos police officer Edward Ter-sero with a sense of deja vu. With a tornado warning in effect, Tersero had been called out Friday night to look for funnel clouds, or "hooks in the sky." A year ago, he had been doing the same thing as a sheriffs deputy in Mitchell County. Disaster struck then, too.

But last year's tornado in Sweetwater did not prepare him for what he saw in Saragosa, Tersero said, i "It was complete chaos," he said. "There were people yelling for help, kids crying. And the town had been leveled." The arrival of rescue crews was hampered by the bad weather that followed the tornado, Tersero said. "On the way out, we were slowed by hail and high winds," he said. "There was a sheet of ice covering one section of the road, and the road was also blocked in places by debris, and downed utility poles and power lines." Once on the scene, Tersero said, rescuers fought the rain and sifted through the debris that had once been the town, looking for people who might still be alive.

The first bodies recovered from the scene, when identified, were loaded into a school bus and transported to Pecos. Police said a makeshift morgue was set up at jay- Erica Apodaca, 5, sits in the lap of her cousin Lori Roman at the Red Cross shelter. the Pecos Funeral Home. Funeral home workers from neighboring towns of Fort Stockton, Mon-ahans and Kermit arrived to help with the casualties. Physicians and nurses from those communities had gathered at nearby Reeves County Memorial Hospital to treat the injured.

rat-. Staff photo by Tom Lankes Jose Barragan, 65, sits on the bed in what was his room before the tornado struck. 1 Town's survival at stake Poor community might die despite family bonds ,1 VV J- By Robert Cullick American-Statesman Staff 1. is f. "AW at said.

All of the town's five public buildings were destroyed: the post office, the Catholic Church, the community center, the Head Start school and the general store. "It's very discouraging," said Tony Gallegos. Twelve members of his extended family were injured in the storm, but none died. The family lost eight homes, a business and all of their automobiles. They survived by hiding under a bridge.

They drove to the truck stop where Tony works, bruised and bleeding. "Times are bad in Saragosa. People were barely making it. It makes me hurt when you see something like this. It breaks your heart," Gallegos said.

"It's a nightmare." Saragosa, a small community of 350 people, many of them farm laborers, has clung to a difficult life for years. The town is in an isolated area of West Texas, about 190 miles east of El Paso and about 120 miles from Odessa. The tornado hit the only man-made objects within miles. The vast Trans-Pecos desert spreads to the horizon to the east. To the west, the Davis Mountains rise 2,000 feet above the desert plain.

Even before the storm that brought the death of 29 people, weather has been unfriendly to Saragosa. The region has suffered from a stubborn drought for the past few years, forcing ranchers to cut back on their herds and making the area unattractive for other development. Annual rainfall is less than 12 inches, about a third of Austin's average. Cotton gins and cotton trucks lay rusting in the fields around Saragosa, victims of the drought. Most fields along the two-lane roads that cross the expanses are not even fenced.

Most of the people of Saragosa are Hispanic and many belong to several large families with the names Lopez, Mendoza, Gallegos and Martinez. Even as the fractured pieces of poor men's dreams were being burned in bonfires to clear debris Saturday, there were signs of hope that the community could be restored. Somebody left his fingerprints while cleaning off the mud surrounding the spoiled altar of the Catholic church and righted several icons: a crude and brightly painted statuette of a lamb and cactus and a votive candle. The glass around the candle had the words: "La Mano Mas "The hand most powerful." SARAGOSA The tornado that slashed across this small West Texas town Friday did more than turn adobe homes into mud and wooden studs into kindling, it ripped a poor but tightly knit community into so many pieces that many doubt it can be put back together. "I don't know if it can come back," said the Rev.

Ralph Bar-ranger, pastor of the local Catholic Church. "I don't know if people even want it to come back. "Most of the people could not afford their houses, which were worth $4,000 to $6,000 each. They were shacks, really, built 40 or 50 years ago," Barranger said. The people have no replacement insurance and they cannot get a mortgage, he said.

"These people are extremely tight, like one family," Barranger said. "Although they are the poorest of the poor, there is nobody in this community that is homeless or hungry." Bruce Reed, Red Cross coordinator, said 50 percent of the community's homes were destroyed. "That's misleading, because the community is wiped out," Reed Staff photo by Tom Lankea Rugs, a basket full of clothes and other items stick out of the remains of a house in Saragosa..