Margaret Tracy wasn't home when a tornado roared through her neighborhood Tuesday afternoon.

On Wednesday she had returned to salvage what was left.

Her belongings were buried among mangled debris off South Broadway in Logan County, about give miles north of Edmond, where she had lived since 1965.

A gray sky loomed as she worked. The smell of soaked earth and wind-splintered wood filled the air. Twisted metal scarred the ground.

“Thank God I was in town, and the friends I was with, they told me not to leave,” said Tracy, clothes in hand. “The siren went off and we knew it was going northeast."

Tracy Wednesday morning as her daughter and future son-in-law helped her save what she could. The smell of splintered wood and rain-soaked earth permeated the air. twisted metal scarred the ground.

A mile east, other families faced a similar painful duty. They were assessing damage to their homes near the Oak Tree Country Club, where houses sell for $1 million.

“Today, I’m just going through what I can save, salvage a little bit,” said Tracy, who was joined by her daughter, Cindy Brewer and future son-in-law, Richard Rippy. “You have to live one day at a time. At least nobody’s hurt.”