EDN Photo by Nick Todaro / Several business in downtown Ennis suffered serious damage during Thursday morning’s tornado.

Phil Banker and Nick Todaro, editor@ennisdailynews.com

At daybreak, people from areas of Ennis unaffected by the storm event overnight woke to a dramatic scene in downtown Ennis.

City Manager Steve Howerton has confirmed reports that a tornado tore through the heart of downtown shortly after midnight, damaging a number of buildings and injuring one person.

First responders from throughout the county flooded into the city, closing off the most damaged portion of West Ennis Avenue from Clay Street to Interstate 45.

Traffic resumed east of downtown before daybreak.

The American Red Cross has set up an incident response location in downtown at Brown and Dallas streets.

Howerton said damages will likely climb into the tens of millions of dollars once thoroughly assessed.

“We’re going to do an aerial assessment later this morning,” he said.

Mayor Russell Thomas issued a disaster declaration shortly after 3 a.m. that has been sent to Gov. Rick Perry’s office.

“It’s a pretty rough one,” Thomas said as traffic began crawling around downtown. “Property is one thing, though, human life is another — that’s the truth.”

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Lifelong Ellis County resident T.J. Fabby announced his second run for the State House of Representatives on Wednesday.

Fabby will run against State Rep. Jim Pitts for the second time in an effort to take the District 10 house seat. Pitts has served in the seat since 1992.

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Ennis saw a nearly 8-percent jump in sales tax revenue for this month’s allocation over its May payment last year.

That puts Ennis near the top of the pile in Ellis County year-to-date in terms of percentage growth. Ennis marked about $397,100 in receipts for the period, which covers sales in March reported as revenue in April. That was up from $364,850 or so in March 2012. Total, the city has pulled in more than $2.04 million in receipts.

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Ellis County Sheriff’s deputies arrested a Waxahachie man on Monday afternoon in connection to an assault with cookware.

ECSO spokesperson JoAnn Livingston said deputies were dispatched to the 1300 block of Southview in Waxahachie on a report of an assault. They arrived to find a 32-year-old woman at a neighbor’s house with a bleeding head wound. She  told deputies her husband struck her several times in the head with a cooking pot.

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Ennis Daily News file photo / Wesley Washington, of Waxahachie, fishes the bank of Lake Bardwell at the foot of the Bardwell bridge in June 2011. Water levels at the lake dropped over a nine-month drought that year, and the area has seen little substantial rain in 2013.

Phil Banker, p...@ennisdailynews.com

An expert from the local office of the Texas AgriLife Extension Service says while the Ennis region might have enough water right now, Texas as a whole must plan ahead.

Extension Service agent Mark Arnold spoke at the Wednesday meeting of the Ennis Lions Club about the water challenges facing the state of Texas over the next few decades.

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The Ellis County Commissioners Court voted to approve several measures to bolster the recently passed county fire code.

The court approved both the appointment of Tom Manning to the position of fire code hearing examiner, as well as the hiring of additional part-time staff to help alleviate the backlog of inspections.

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Precinct 3 Commissioner Paul Perry spoke Monday evening at the first-ever San Jacinto Day celebration near the statue of Richard Ellis outside the Ellis County Courthouse in Waxahachie. Several speakers, including Perry, Ken Chambers and TJ Fabby, spoke on the importance of remembering the values fought for during the Texas Revolution.

Ellis County’s percentage of unemployed slipped slightly again in March, falling from 6.5 percent in the month prior to 6.4 percent.

The decline comes on an increase of reported employed workers and a slight decrease in reported unemployed. In February, 70,830 workers reported gainful employment, with that number logged at 71,136 in March. Unemployment fell from 4,940 in February to 4,874 in March. The total workforce also grew to 76,010, about 300 more workers than the February figure.

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Palmer ISD administrators are looking into replacing their aging elementary school building, according to Palmer Superintendent Kevin Noack.

Noack said they are in the “beginning stages” of evaluating possible new construction of a school to replace the roughly 70-year-old building currently in use.

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