From Grass to Dump Trucks, Tornado Left Little Intact

Folks here found out Wednesday that the monstrous black funnel cloud that pulverized their small community rated an F-5, a classification that outstrips “severe” or even “dangerous.” The F-5 is known simply as “incredible.”

The tornado ripped acres of grass out of the ground, tossed a hefty dump truck a good quarter-mile down the road and blasted the doors off the storm cellar where Keith Fritzmeyer and his neighbors were huddled, praying. Through the gap where the doors used to be, Fritzmeyer watched the twister pick up the house next door, bat it around like a child’s ball, then explode it into shards. If it hadn’t been for that storm cellar, Fritzmeyer said, he and his family would have been killed.

Everyone had their own stories to tell Wednesday: narrow escapes and lucky breaks, accounts of kittens found--alive--buried under plaster wallboard or squeezed under couches. They told those stories often, as if to distract themselves from the grim task at hand. The task of sorting through the debris to see what could be salvaged.

“The reality is just setting in today,” Bertha Sue Ollison said as she picked through the wreckage of her trailer home, emerging with a dirty--but unbroken--wine glass and a garbage bag full of clothes.

“Every once in a while you’ll cry, and every once in a while you’ll laugh,” said her husband, Earl, who looked at the moment to be much closer to tears. “I think we’re still in shock.”

All along the tornado’s deadly path, similar scenes played out as authorities allowed most victims to return to their ravaged homes for a first full day of cleanup.

Though residents had the all-clear to return to Bridge Creek, National Guard troops periodically evacuated them throughout the day to search for bodies. The tornado killed 11 people here, and authorities were still finding body parts Wednesday. They also were looking for at least a few missing residents but could not say exactly how many. “The number keeps going up and down,” a state trooper said with evident frustration.

As the search continued, the official Oklahoma death toll stood at 38 on Wednesday. The tornadoes also killed five people in Kansas. Hospitals reported they had treated 669 injured victims around Oklahoma. And early estimates of property damage nudged close to $1 billion.

Bridge Creek, a fast-growing neighborhood 30 miles southwest of Oklahoma City, was hit by the biggest and most powerful of the four dozen tornadoes that rampaged across the state. The winds that roared through the modest homes and wide-open fields of this rural community topped 260 mph, prompting meteorologists to classify the twister as an F-5, the most intense class of tornado on the Fujita wind damage scale.

No one around here would argue with that call.

The tornado flattened block after block, leaving huge chunks of Bridge Creek looking like a landfill. Car fenders dangled from treetops. The Baptist church was utterly crushed. A blue recliner chair sat at least a half-mile from any living room, one of its arms stripped clean of fabric.

With the grass ripped out, the whole neighborhood took on the red-brown hue of Oklahoma soil--a color relieved only by the pink fluffs of insulation twisted around bushes and on fences. Grit swirled through the air and stung the eyes. Everywhere, residents tallied up their possessions and found they had precious little to their names.

“We’ve lost everything,” said Earl Ollison, a construction worker. “And it’s not like it’s just me. Everyone lost everything.”

Even in his misery, Ollison had to marvel at the tornado’s capriciousness. The winds peeled back the frame of his trailer, pushed the entire foundation two feet from the front steps and knocked down several enormous trees. Yet not a single mirror in his home was broken. The big propane tank in his front yard was not dented. But the storm somehow managed to twist his toddler’s favorite matchbox car in half.

That toddler, 3-year-old Jacob Lee, was so traumatized he refused to get out of the car when his father drove him to the smashed remains of their trailer. He feared trees might fall on him. He worried the winds might return. He couldn’t understand where his house had gone.

“His whole little world’s gone,” Ollison said. “When he comes here, you can see it on his face.”

Ollison then brightened a little, remembering that he had found his TV and VCR intact--and that he had hopes of digging some of his clothes out of the mess. “At least,” he said, “we have something to look through.”

He had a point.

Just a few blocks away, Robin Varner had nothing to look through, not even a pile of lumber. Her entire house, the home she and her family had built over 14 years, had been lifted off its concrete foundation and whisked away. All that remained were a few of the tiles from her kitchen floor, a dented brass doorknob and a photo of her daughter that a neighbor had found about two miles away.

With nothing to salvage and nothing to rebuild, Varner had already decided she would leave Bridge Creek. “All the trees are gone,” she said. “All the grass is gone. I just don’t think we can get past the devastation.”

Others, however, were determined to return.

“I ain’t letting no tornado beat me,” vowed Fritzmeyer, a burly man in denim overalls. “This is my home. I’m staying here.”

Next time, however, he plans to spend the $1,500 it would take to dig a decent storm cellar like the one at a neighbor’s house that saved his life Monday. “Maybe I’ll put one in the house and one outside,” he said. “We’re going to build one big enough for everybody around here.”

Ollison too said he plans to dig a cellar. But he figured he wouldn’t ever need to use it.

“I’m going to rebuild right here because the odds of another one hitting the exact same spot are pretty slim,” he said. “I hope.”