Quapaw, Okla., resident Randy Dixon used small words to describe the damage caused by a storm that blew through Picher, Quapaw, Okla., and rural parts of Ottawa County in northeast Oklahoma late Saturday afternoon.
“It is bad,” Dixon said. “The Picher Express is gone and things are pretty well tore up.”
According to Meterologist Nicole McGavock with the National Weather Service in Tulsa, Okla., there are five confirmed dead and approximately 20 blocks of structure damage in Picher.
The storms also ravaged parts of southwest Missouri. The National Weather Service in Springfield, Mo. confirmed five people were dead there, including three confirmed in Newton County. Damage in Missouri includes areas north of Seneca on Highway 43 and heavy damage was reported to structures along Iris Road there.
Another person was killed in Jasper County near Carthage after heavy winds knocked a tree onto a trailer.
Shortly after officials arrived on the scene, Oklahoma Gov. Brad Henry was quick to declare Picher and all of Ottawa County a disaster area, as well as call members of the Oklahoma National Guard into Picher.
“I don’t think that Picher is in very good shape,” said Quapaw Fire Chief Casey Abernathy. “I know that they have mass trauma and it is unknown how many injuries they have but it is enormous.”
Abernathy said 10 firefighers from Quapaw are in Picher to help with rescue and damage assessment.
In addition, Crawford County Sheriff Sandy Horton said the county has sent one of its generators to Picher to help power its fire station.
“We have offered any assistance that we can offer to both Oklahoma and Missouri,” Horton said. “We do have deputies on call as well as ambulances and the Mobile Command Post ... whatever they need we will provide for them.”
Abernathy said that in Quapaw, the tornado did cause some destruction.
“We had damage to Quapaw Grade School and the house just north of the grade school is completely wiped out,” Abernathy said. “We have power lines down and several power poles on the ground as well as fence wiped out.”
In addition, two houses east of Quapaw were leveled and there was other heavy damage near Peoria, Okla. Abernathy said there were no reported injuries in Quapaw, but the entire town is without power.
“Empire is telling me that they don’t know when they are going to be able to get us back up because they are out of power poles,” Abernathy said. “I don’t know if they have poles in other areas that they can bring in, but they are out in this area.”
Dixon said he had a vantage point to the tornado due to the fact that his mother-in-law lives in Picher.
“We took off flying to Picher and saw the tornado, but we kept going to her house,” Dixon said. “She was standing outside and said that the clouds were strange with the tornado right behind her. She did not even know that it was about 100 yards behind her.”
After the storm blew through, he said he went back into Picher to check on his niece, who also lives in Picher. He said her house took a direct hit from the tornado.
He said that in addition to his niece and mother-in-law’s houses sustaining damage, his own house in Quapaw was also ravaged by the tornado.
“We got a hole through the roof and all of our windows are broken out,” Dixon said. “We had an above-ground swimming pool and it is gone, and we had some damage to cars we had parked, but we are not nearly as bad as some other people are.”
Abernathy also said he saw the tornado after it was first reported on the ground.
“I heard Welch Fire Department say that they confirmed a tornado on the ground north of their town, two miles from the state line and I jumped up, went outside and set our sirens off in town,” Abernathy said. “I looked outside, and I could see the tornado was right over Picher, then I saw it take a turn and head towards our town.
“I have not heard how big, but it looked to me that it was about a quarter-mile wide,” Abernathy said. “Maybe a little bigger, maybe not, but I think it grew, then it shrunk, but by the time it got here, it was about a quarter-mile wide.”
Dixon said that, with his tornado experience, he was still overwhelmed by what he saw.
“I have been in tornadoes all over in western Kansas and this, by far, is the biggest one that I have ever seen,” Dixon said. “We could see it 10 miles away.”
Matthew Clark can be reached at matthew.clark@morningsun.net or at 620-231-2600, Ext. 140.
