AUSTIN, Texas — On Monday, the tornado that destroyed homes in Round Rock first affected neighbors in the Wells Branch neighborhood in North Austin.
"We didn't have any warning," Philip Condi said.
"We got the warning on the phone afterwards, after it was all done," Ivonne Condi said.
The Condis moved to Wells Branch more than 20 years ago. Ivonne remembers hearing strong winds and even seeing a line in the tornado speed past their backyard.
"I said, 'This is not normal. This is not normal.' So I went to the cage, my bird's cage, and I just, I was bringing him over to our room to get to the closet. We didn't make it," Ivonne said.
Ivonne and her bird weren't able to hide in their main bedroom, but the tornado flew by in a matter of seconds.
"It was the following day that I was like, 'OK,' it's just when it really hit me, you know ... I was shaking afterwards," Ivonne said.
The neighborhood is mostly cleared of debris now, but some piles of fencing and broken glass litter the sidewalks. While Ivonne and Philip have been residents for a while, some neighbors just moved in.
"I could hear a lot of noise, like, that was probably the wind blowing. And all of a sudden things are rattling up and the glass was shattering and I could see the wood pieces of the fence plucking and shooting and piercing into the house," Rubayat Khan said.
Khan, his wife and two young daughters moved to the North Austin neighborhood in February from Dubai.
"What ended up happening is I got a bruise, we got deep cuts here and my wife got in her leg and so forth, and some on my body as well. But I'm so glad that nothing happened to my kids," Khan said. "We had like blood on the floor a little bit, and it was a massive amount of damages."
Many of the windows are boarded up in the neighborhood and covered with tarps. Fences are spotty at best in some spots. Both Khan and Condi noted in the days following the tornado that the community came together to clean up and check on each other.
"Our neighbor here, Steve, great guy, man. He came running in. He saw from the window like, you know, he asked if you were hurt, jumping in because we were bleeding red and like I said, we just moved in. We didn't even have medical kits in the house, right? As simple as basics as that. And he came quickly running in and he put some Band-Aids ... took care of us," Khan said.
Now Khan hopes moving on from the trauma of the tornado will progress sooner than later.
"I don't know how this is going to affect their brain development process, but I would just want them to forget it as quickly as possible," Khan said.
PEOPLE ARE ALSO READING: