To paraphrase a Texas bumper sticker, Rob Smat wasn’t in Fort Worth when a tornado devastated the city’s westside and downtown on March 28, 2000, but he got here as soon as he could.
Smat’s family, then living in Georgia, was planning a move to Fort Worth when they saw the destruction on their television screens. Smat, then 6, said his grandmother called and told them there wasn’t going to be a city left to move to.
The city wasn’t eradicated, but the F3 tornado left a wide swath of destruction. At the end of the tornado’s rampage, officials estimated it inflicted $450 million in property damage. Casualties included two dead and 80 injured…