A tornado leveled a motel and tore through a mobile home park near Oklahoma City, killing two people and injuring at least 29 others, authorities said on Sunday.

The twister touched down in El Reno, about 25 miles west of Oklahoma City, late on Saturday night. It crossed an interstate and hit the American Budget Value Inn before ripping through the Skyview Estates trailer park, flipping and leveling homes, El Reno’s mayor, Matt White, said at a news conference.

“It’s a tragic scene out there,” White said, adding: “People have absolutely lost everything.”

White said the city established a GoFundMe site, the City of El Reno Tornado Relief Fund, to raise money to help affected families.

The two people who were killed were in the mobile home park, White said, adding that everyone at the motel was accounted for but searchers were still going through the mobile home park. Many of the people living there are Hispanic and do not speak English which has complicated the rescue efforts, he said.

White did not give details about the two people who were killed.

The 29 people who were injured were taken to hospitals, where some were undergoing surgery. Some of the injuries were deemed critical, he said.

“The thing about El Reno is we are more than a community, we are a family,” White said. “We’re going to overcome this. It’s so devastating to see the loss out there.”

Part of a roof is exposed at the American Budget Value Inn after a tornado moved through the area in El Reno, Oklahoma, on 26 May. Photograph: Bryan Terry/AP

April Sandefer, a spokeswoman for the University of Oklahoma medical center, said the hospital had treated 13 patients injured during the tornado. She declined to disclose the severity of the injuries or to say how many patients, if any, were admitted.

National Weather Service (NWS) personnel were assessing the damage but the agency gave the twister a preliminary EF-2 rating, which would mean it had wind speeds of 111mph to 135mph.

It emerged later on Sunday that an apparent tornado downed trees and power lines and heavily damaged some businesses in a suburb of Tulsa, the second largest city in Oklahoma.

The apparent twister struck Sapulpa early in the morning. Sapulpa police said on Facebook they had not heard of anyone being killed and only a few people had reported minor injuries. Damage was reported in other area communities.

Many roads were closed, including parts of the Creek Turnpike, where the Oklahoma highway patrol said power lines came down.

Raymond Beck, who owns a memorabilia shop in Sapulpa, told the Tulsa World he was in his store when the storm hit. “Stuff was flying everywhere,” he said. “It sounded like a real high-pitched whistle to me. I knew I had to get away from the windows.”

The storms came after a week of tornados, severe rain and flooding in southern plains and midwest states, including a tornado that hit Jefferson City, Missouri. The bad weather and flooding had been blamed for at least nine deaths before the tornado hit El Reno.

Authorities in Tulsa advised residents of some neighborhoods to consider leaving for higher ground because the Arkansas river is stressing the city’s old levee system. Downriver, about 100 miles south-east of Tulsa in Arkansas’ second-largest city, Fort Smith, authorities said 100 to 200 people had already evacuated their homes due to flooding, which was expected to get worse in the coming days.

Vehicles drive through floodwater following heavy rains in El Reno, Oklahoma, on 21 May. Photograph: Sue Ogrocki/AP

Before dawn in El Reno, images from the American Budget Value Inn showed it was destroyed. Emergency crews sifted through rubble after part of the second story collapsed. Overturned cars and twisted metal could be seen briefly as lightning flashed across the sky. The sirens of emergency vehicles were heard in the distance.

“We have absolutely experienced a traumatic event,” White said in an earlier news conference. “We’re doing a search and rescue right now ... we have all hands on deck.”

Tweety Garrison, 63, said she was inside her mobile home at the park with her husband, two young grandchildren and a family friend when the storm hit. When she heard the storm coming she hit the ground. Moments later, she said, she heard the mobile home next door slam into hers, before it flipped over and landed on her roof.

Garrison said the incident lasted five to 10 minutes. She said there was a tornado warning on her phone but the sirens did not go off until after the tornado hit.

Garrison’s 32-year-old son, Elton, said he heard tornado sirens and had just laid down at home about a half-mile away when his phone rang. He recognized his mother’s number, but there was no voice on the other end.

“I thought, ‘That’s weird,”’ he said. Then his mother called back and delivered a chilling message: “We’re trapped.”

Elton said when he arrived at his mother’s home, he found it blocked by debris and sitting with another trailer on top of it. He eventually lifted a portion of an outside wall just enough so all five occupants could escape.

“My parents were in there and two of my kids, one nine and the other 12 … my main emotion was fear,” said Garrison, who has lived in El Reno for about 26 years. “I couldn’t get them out of there quick enough.”

Garrison said he was not alarmed by the sirens when he first heard them.

“We hear them all the time here, so it didn’t seem like a big deal ... I heard a lot of rain with the wind. But when it kinda got calm all of a sudden, that’s when it didn’t feel right.”