Rare winter twisters leave Oklahomans sifting through debris

James Coburn
CNHI News Service

Edmond, OK February 12, 2009 12:08 pm

— 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.”

The Edmond tornado was among several storms that swept across Oklahoma Tuesday. The most severe killed eight people and injured 14 others in Lone Grove, a community of about 4,600 people west of Ardmore, near the Texas border.

One of those injured later died in a Dallas hospital.

Most of those killed in Lone Grove lived in area of mobile homes, like Tracy's, where there was no tornado shelter. One victim was found beneath a pickup truck the tornado had dropped on him. Carter County Sheriff's Deputy David Gilley said 100 to 150 homes were destroyed in the town.

Other tornadoes skipped through the Oklahoma City area but didn't cause major injury. The largest traveled about 6 1/2 miles west and northwest of Edmond, according to the National Weather Service's early reports.

The Red Cross had set up two shelters in Edmond but closed one because it wasn't needed, according to a Red Cross spokeswoman. The group was sending volunteers to Lone Grove.

The February twisters were rare, even for tornado-prone Oklahoma, where a long tornado season stretches from early spring through late summer. Not counting last week's storms, just 44 tornadoes have hit the state in February since 1950, according to the Weather Service. By comparison, the state recorded 77 in all of last year.

Tornadoes that do strike in February also tend to be relatively weak. More than half of those recorded by the Weather Service in Oklahoma have been so-called gale tornadoes, with gusts up to 85 mph, or small EF1 tornadoes.

Tuesday's tornado in Edmond was an EF2, with estimated gusts up to 135 mph, according to the Weather Service. The Lone Grove twister was classified as a devastating EF4, with gusts reaching 200 mph.

Tracy's son, Rick Warrick, narrowly escaped the Edmond twister. He lives next door to Tracy, with his aunt and uncle, according to Tracy's daughter.

“He was the only one home," Brewer said, "and he blew out the wall, and they found him on the side of the road.

"He saved my uncle’s dog," she said.

Digging through what was left after the tornado, Brewer and Rippy were handing Tracy clothes, shoes, important papers and keepsakes.

“I’ve got to get my blood pressure pills," Tracy said. "I think they found one of them."

The cleanup will continue.

"We're tough people, strong," said Brewer.

James Coburn writes for The Edmond, Okla., Sun. Material from The Associated Press was used in this report.

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