BREAKING: Russo and Steele tents collapse

Getting word from our men on the ground that the weather in Scottsdale is horrible and that two tents collapsed at Russo and Steele. Matt Litwin writes:

In a word: Flooded. Gov. has declared a state of emergency this evening. At Barrett, we got word of Russo’s main tent material removed by the wind and it blocked 101 for about an hour. Turned on the 10 pm news and there was rumor of a tornado touching down just north of us. Through it all, we managed to get B-J coverage for HMM…Koch already took care of HSX and HMN. While Terry and I were battling wind and rain, Koch got block shots. Midways were shut down…just managed to get out of B-J because the exits were being closed..long story there. Attendance was very thin…if you did not see it live on Speed.

And later:

NWS locally is still trying to confirm a tornado touchdown north of us. Nearly 2 inches of rain today in Scottsdale, and it’s still coming down. Measuring snowfall by the foot up near Flagstaff.

Anyway, the Russo main tent did not suffer damage. That said, at roughly 6 pm tonight, wind gusts collapsed two tents sheltering auction cars. No injuries, but the site was evacuated. No word on how many auction cars were damaged in the two tents, but witnesses estimate “in the millions.” The material from one tent did have a portion of the 101 loop closed for an hour. According to the local news, R&S is re-evaluating in the morning before the next batch of rain moves in mid-morning.

The footage of one of the tents coming down, above, comes from YouTuber markstevensquest, who wrote that the tent went down around 6 p.m. AzFamily.com has more on the tent collapses as well.

By the way, if you’d like to see the tents pre-collapse to get a scale of what just went down, Flickr user azglenn posted a photo of them from the other day.