Severe Storm Damages Basketball Gym in Southern Texas

A basketball gym in McAllen, Texas, sustained “catastrophic levels” of damage on Saturday, April 29, following a severe storm in the area the previous night.

Footage posted by All Star Basketball McAllen, an all-year gym for teenagers and children, shows the wall of one of the basketball courts partially destroyed on Saturday afternoon.

“This is an extraordinary occurrence,” gym owner and coach Joseph Beltran told Storyful, adding that the building had previously withstood Hurricane Hanna in 2020.

By Saturday afternoon, thousands of residents in the area were still without power, local media reported. Credit: All Star Basketball McAllen via Storyful

Video transcript

- Hi. Morning. Coach Joseph, all-star basketball. We had a storm. Those of you that live in the Valley saw that we had a big storm last night. McAllen got hit really hard and I know other cities did as well.

So I came into the gym because I could see that our power came back early in the morning. And I tuned in and I could see that the gym sustained some pretty bad damages.

So those of you that have been here before you know our building. Obviously we have our court here.

And it was over here that sustained catastrophic level damage. We have our court over here. One of our walls from the space next to us. Something got damaged in there. The wind made its way into the building and knocked down our wall behind one of our courts.

And from there we had our scoreboard.