Dear readers: I’ve been remiss in posting here and I wanted you to know why. It’s been two months since the tornado but the process is continuing, with FEMA a regular presence and debris cleanup ongoing. Regular posts will resume soon!
On the night of Saturday, May 25, there was a tornado on its way to Claremore. This was a rare event, in fact when the topic came up at all it was, “Tornadoes never come to Claremore!” and the conversation was over.
We retired to Oklahoma in 2016 and bought our very first house in retirement in Claremore, the location, as it happens, of the very first scene in Vicki’s brilliant BROKEN HEART LAND trilogy, as Claremore was the main location of the Dawes Commission in 1907.
We have gotten into the important habit of watching the local TV weather when storms are on the way, sometimes late into the night, as really bad weather usually requires continuous TV coverage.
The technology they have for tracking tornado-generating fronts for the TV weather is so incredibly granular that they can target neighborhoods and streets and actually see the tornadoes forming minute to minute.
We’ve recently seen the Oklahoma towns of Sulphur and Barnsdall almost get wiped off the map. On May 25, it was Claremore’s turn.
Our “safe space” is the hall closet, barely big enough for the two of us, in fact I have to move the vacuum cleaner and two mops out so we can fit. We’ve gotten into the closet a couple of times in recent years, but usually decided that it wasn’t really necessary, particularly as it got hard to breathe in just a couple of minutes. Also, we had never brought our two cats, Mack and Betty, in with us. I knew it would be like herding some kind of small, unruly animals, so my attitude was always, “The cats will be fine on their own!”
This time was different.
Whenever we get in the closet we take our mortgage papers, Vicki’s laptop, my hard drive, the weather radio, and a flashlight. This time even the cats were rounded up, and they were happy to be jammed in there with us.
The wind picked up. We heard a loud rattling sound which turned out to be the slats of the attic fan, in the ceiling right outside the closet, just flapping with the wind pressure. Nothing serious.
The wind died down after maybe three minutes. It got quieter. We got out of the closet. The lights had gone out. It was windy and pouring rain, and the flashes of lightning was all the light we had to see outdoors. It looked like some trees had fallen in the backyard but it was hard to tell.
In the morning we could see that it was much worse.
For years our next-door neighbor’s overgrown, unkempt yard and looming, enormous hackberry trees had caused us concern. We always thought they would eventually fall on our house, in fact just last fall we had a tree service cut away most of the high, sagging branches, but the big, looming trees were still there.
The wind that night was in the opposite direction, and all, I mean ALL, of the trees blew away from our house and mostly into our neighbor’s yard. By daylight we of course ventured out, and over the following days it became clear that most of the tornado damage was to the very biggest trees. We had had way too much rain in May, the ground was more sodden than anyone realized, and throughout Claremore, big trees were pulled up by the roots, or if not, had their tops completely chewed off. Here in town there was very little wind damage to structures except where a tree fell on a house.
Our house sustained very little damage, a couple of dings to the roof, and our backyard stockade fence was completely blown down, concrete footers and all.
Lots of wires were down, Our street was blocked by fallen trees in both directions, and in the ensuing days when we were able to drive around again, the damage to trees and big structures was (and still is) overwhelming. An enormous Baptist church in the middle of town almost lost its roof. The police department’s roof is mostly patches. A lot of power poles were knocked down entirely. Three weeks later and most of the damage is still evident. The cleanup is proceeding slowly.
We were without power for about three days when Vicki’s cousin showed up with a spare generator, a godsend, and he invited us to stay with them and be air-conditioned, do laundry, whatever. But he knew we would never leave the cats, so that afternoon he returned with a cooler full of beer, wine, water and ice, a floor fan, and an air conditioner.
The volunteer help has been overwhelming. Folks with pickup trucks, chainsaws and Bobcats, some alone, some organized, some charging, some free, just started showing up. Mercy Chefs showed up at our front door for about four days, with really wonderful hot meals. A Southern Baptist group from Alabama just showed up and started chainsawing.
Without any TV or internet, we used my iPhone for everything! Watching TV news and weather, texting, email, pretty much everything. I kept getting updates from Consumer Cellular, my carrier, that I kept exceeding my data limit and they would kick me to a higher level. Eventually, right at the end before we got power back, I was notified that I had exceeded Consumer Cellular’s absolute top limit of 60gb and so my service would start getting sluggish. Great!
The power is back on, we’re working with Allstate on our insurance claim using their app on my phone, and we finally got TV, internet and land line working again last Friday, almost three weeks since the event. We’re in pretty good shape, considering that the tornado’s path of destruction missed us by about twenty feet. But the cleanup in Claremore will be going on for some time. The damage to trees especially is quite overwhelming but weirdly uneven. Driving around town is still difficult, both physically and mentally, and life attempts to return to normal.
Thanks for reading. You can always drop me a line at dickens@mooneyart.com .
