June 1st, 2013
By MANNY FERNANDEZ and MARC SANTORA
Twelve days after a tornado killed 24 people and destroyed hundreds of homes, this battered city and its surrounding suburbs awoke Saturday morning to the aftermath of Round 2. A storm on Friday set off tornadoes and severe flooding, causing widespread damage around the region and claiming at least nine victims, including two children.
None of the tornadoes that touched down were as powerful as the one that tore through much of Moore, Okla., on May 20. But the high winds, hail and heavy rain — a total of roughly eight inches in a few hours — wreaked their own sort of havoc on Oklahoma City and suburbs to the west, overturning tractor-trailer rigs, stranding motorists on flooded streets and interstate highways and sending passengers at Will Rogers World Airport in Oklahoma City into underground tunnels to seek shelter.
Tens of thousands remained without power as the storm moved through Arkansas, Missouri and Kentucky, claiming at least three additional lives.
Oklahoma officials said a woman and her child who appeared to have been caught in the storm on Interstate 40 west of Oklahoma City were among the dead. Even towns far east of Oklahoma City, like Henryetta, 90 miles away, were drenched in a storm that produced hurricane-like effects.
Main Street in Henryetta was a swift-moving river on Saturday morning, with water rising to the tops of the tires of stranded cars, setting garbage cans and other debris afloat and seeping into a Walmart store, gas stations and other businesses.
Moore, 11 miles south of Oklahoma City, appeared to have been spared the kind of damage that was inflicted by the May 20 tornado, which destroyed an elementary school and killed 10 children. But this time there was flooding to contend with, as well.
Mayor Glenn Lewis told The Oklahoman newspaper that Moore was experiencing widespread flooding that accompanied Friday’s high winds and drenching rainfall.
“There’s damage all over,” he said. “The power is completely out. The water is about four feet deep in every end of town, just about. We’re advising people to stay off the roads and please don’t get out in this. It’s terrible.”
State Representative Jon Echols, who represents parts of Oklahoma City, huddled with his wife, children and other relatives in the safe room of his house on Friday. He lives in southwest Oklahoma City, an area hard hit by the storm.
“It went right over my house,” Mr. Echols said Saturday. “My roof is pretty much gone. Tons and tons of leaks inside. It’s all about perspective, though. Before Moore, I would have said this was an extremely damaged home. Moore was a new bar.”
By late Saturday afternoon, a gorgeous day had unfolded in the region, with nearly cloudless blue skies and bright sunshine, a jarring contrast to the debris-strewn pastures and demolished buildings along a stretch of Interstate 40 about 30 miles west of downtown, near the suburb of El Reno.
On Sunday morning, Gov. Mary Fallin planned to tour a technology education center in El Reno that was damaged by the storm. The 15 staff members and students inside the building when the tornado struck at 6:30 p.m. Friday sought safety in an underground room, and no one was injured.
Friday’s tornado gnarled billboards on the side of the interstate, their torn advertisements dangling like ribbons. Trees were missing their tops, and what remained resembled jagged sticks in the ground.
The OKC West Livestock Market, which held weekly cattle auctions, was in ruins. The barn-style building that housed offices and a restaurant had caved in, and the maze of cattle pens behind it was cluttered with chairs and furniture tossed into the air by the tornado. Eleven cattle were missing; two had to be put down because of injuries. About 6,000 cattle came through the market each week for the Monday and Wednesday auctions.
“The only beauty of this whole thing was it happened on a Friday,” said the market’s co-owner, Bill Barnhart, 58. “Very few people were here, very few cattle were here. If it happened on a Wednesday, it would have been horrible.”
And yet Tornado Alley is nothing if not efficient: Traffic lanes on the interstate were already cleared of debris and damaged vehicles, and cars and trucks sped by the wreckage. Mr. Barnhart was talking late Saturday about putting up a tent while the building was being reconstructed so the auctions could continue.
“It has been a hard couple of weeks,” Gov. Mary Fallin told a local television station, adding, “We are resilient. We will go through and come through it on the other side. Just hang on, and tomorrow is a better day.”
Equally violent weather in Missouri and Arkansas caused considerable property damage and flash flooding. Three people were killed in Arkansas on Thursday and early Friday, and several others were missing in floods as water rushed down from the Ouachita Mountains near Y City, 125 miles west of Little Rock, during heavy downpours.
One of those killed was a local sheriff who drowned while checking on residents, according to local authorities.
In Missouri, the combination of high water and fallen power lines closed some 200 roads, snarling traffic on highways and side streets in the St. Louis area. At the Hollywood Casino in suburban Maryland Heights, gamblers rushed from the floor as a storm blew out windows, and aerial video showed the siding and roofs ripped from dozens of houses in the area.
Gov. Jay Nixon of Missouri declared a state of emergency.
In Paducah, Ky., dozens of people were evacuated from a Days Inn hotel because of flooding.
The area around Oklahoma City on Friday experienced the most severe weather, officials said. Rain fell at a rate of two inches an hour in some places.
The strongest tornado, which struck just west of Oklahoma City, had wind speeds that ranged from 160 to 199 miles per hour, according to the National Weather Service.
The heavy rain and hail hampered rescue efforts, and highways and streets were clogged late into the night as motorists worked their way around flooded portions of the city.
A spokeswoman for the Oklahoma Highway Patrol, Betsy Randolph, said that the mother killed with her 4-month-old infant had been caught Friday evening with other motorists on Interstate 40 when the tornadoes swept in near Mustang, a suburb 15 miles southwest of downtown Oklahoma City.
Their vehicle flipped over, and a state trooper found their bodies near the car. The infant was severely injured but still alive when the trooper found the baby, she said, but died in his patrol car before paramedics arrived.
Twelve people — all of them motorists or passengers on Interstate 40 — were injured by debris or in vehicle crashes and were transported to hospitals or treated at the scene, Ms. Randolph said. “It was a parking lot,” she said of the interstate at the time the storm hit. “It was chaotic. It was a nightmare.”
In a vivid demonstration of the power of the winds in some area, the vehicle of a reporter for the Weather Channel, Michael Bettes, was picked up and tossed by the twister that touched down near El Reno.
That tornado was estimated to have stretched more than a mile wide, with winds topping 120 m.p.h.
“We had some significant flash flooding in the Oklahoma City metropolitan area,” said Rick Smith, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s office in Norman, Okla. “It was just about everything you can imagine, going on at once,” he said of the storm system.
Source: The New York Times
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