Edmund Oklahoma Suffers as Tornado Blows Through

[Thor]

Edmond residents begin clean-up after tornado
James Coburn
The Edmond Sun

EDMOND — Margaret Tracy thanks God that she wasn’t in her trailer home when a tornado decimated it to rubble Tuesday afternoon. Her ravaged belongings were buried in mangled twists of debris at 14525 S. Broadway in Logan County, just north of Waterloo Road.

A gray sky loomed above Tracy early Wednesday morning as her daughter and future son-in-law helped her salvage through scattered belongings. The smell of splintered wood and rain-soaked earth permeated the air. The surrounding ground was scarred by splintered wood and twisted metal. But Tracy’s memories of the place that was her home since 1965 were safe within her. A small trailer park of less than five homes appeared destroyed.

“Thank God I was in town and the friends I was with, they told me not to leave,” Tracy said with clothes in hand. “The siren went off and we knew it was going northeast. I had a feeling when it hit Kelly.”

The National Weather Service was still preparing an estimate at noon of the tornado’s wind velocity, said Ty Judd, meteorologist. The service planned to send a team to Edmond, Oklahoma City and Lone Grove to assess the damages from the three tornadoes spotted Tuesday afternoon in the state.

Parts of ground appeared as if clawed from the earth. The nightmare of tornadic winds did not discriminate between areas of Edmond as it slammed into the city about 3 p.m. Tuesday. Just a mile to the east, other families wearily assessed damage to their $1 million homes in the Oak Tree addition with the same resilient strength of determination to manage their lives.

Other neighborhoods damaged include Homested, Oak Tree Park, Sorghum Mill Estates and Coffee Creek, Mayor Dan O’Neil said.

“Today, I’m just going through what I can save, salvage a little bit,” Tracy said. “You have to live one day at a time. At least nobody’s hurt.”

Her son, Rick Warrick, narrowly escaped with his life.

“He lives next door with my aunt and uncle,” said Tracy’s daughter, Cindy Brewer. “He was the only one home and he blew out the wall and they found him on the side of the road. He saved my uncle’s dog.”

Brewer and her fiance Richard Rippy handed Tracy garments, shoes, important papers and sentimental keepsakes.

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

Brewer encourages anybody who wants to help join the clean-up effort in the area. “As long as they realize that — it’s all that matters to me,” she said. “We’re tough people — strong.”

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[Odin's Hand]

Oak Tree is the most expensive community of neighborhoods to reside at in the OKC metro. There will be double-digit millions of $ property losses easy with even just a 10-20 houses being damage. Damage estimates from there could easily be $50 million.