SULPHER, Okla. — Small towns in Oklahoma continued a long cleanup process Monday, April 29, 2024, after tornadoes flattened homes and buildings and killed four people, including an infant, widening a destructive outbreak of severe weather across the middle of the U.S.
Punishing storms that began late Saturday in Oklahoma injured at least 100 people, damaged a rural hospital, washed out roads and knocked out power to more than 40,000 customers at one point, state officials said. Tornadoes on Friday in Iowa and Nebraska also caused wide destruction and were blamed for one death.
There were 25 tornadoes confirmed by the National Weather Service in Oklahoma and parts of Texas on Saturday, according to NWS information shared Monday by Mike Honigsberg, Enid/Garfield County Emergency Management director.
One near Marietta was rated EF4, while two were rated EF3: Sulphur and near Holdenville. NWS officials still are analyzing damage from Sulphur that may be stronger, according to the report.
There were EF2-rated tornadoes in Ardmore and west of Goldsby; EF1 tornadoes near Hillsdale, west-northwest of Calumet, southwest of Dibble, Norman, east of Tinker Air Force Base and Midwest City/Choctaw; and EF0 tornadoes near Newkirk, north of Stillwater and Cole. Eight more have been confirmed but still need investigation, according to the National Weather Service.
“You just can’t believe the destruction”
The destruction was extensive in Sulphur, a town of about 5,000 people south of Oklahoma City, where a tornado crumpled many downtown buildings, tossed cars and buses and sheared the roofs off houses across a 15-block radius.
“You just can’t believe the destruction,” Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt said during a Sunday visit to the hard-hit town of Sulphur. “It seems like every business downtown has been destroyed.”
Stitt issued an executive order Sunday declaring a state of emergency in 12 counties — including Garfield County in Northwest Oklahoma — due to the fallout from the severe weather, and Attorney General Gentner Drummond said price-gouging laws are in effect for the counties most affected.
White House officials said President Joe Biden spoke to Stitt on Sunday and offered the full support of the federal government.
A reported long-track tornado killed at least two people, including a 4-month-old baby, as it ripped through the Hughes County town of Holdenville. The tornado moved through a mostly rural area northwest of the Hughes County town, but destroyed several structures along the way.
Another person died in the town of Sulphur and a fourth victim was killed along Interstate 35 near the southern Oklahoma city of Marietta, according to the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management.
Hospitals across the state reported about 100 injuries, including people apparently cut or struck by debris or hurt from falls, according to the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management. Stitt said about 30 people were injured alone in Sulphur, including some who were in a bar as the tornado tore through.
‘Power flashes” in Sulphur
Authorities said the tornado in Sulphur began in a city park before barreling through the downtown, flipping cars and ripping the roofs and walls off of brick buildings. Windows and doors were blown out of structures that remained standing.
“How do you rebuild it? This is complete devastation,” Kelly Trussell, a lifelong Sulphur resident, said as she surveyed the damage. “It is crazy. You want to help but where do you start?”
Carolyn Goodman traveled to Sulphur from the nearby town of Ada in search of her former sister-in-law, Sheila Hilliard Goodman, who hunkered down inside Raina’s Sport Lounge with about 30 other customers in the popular downtown hangout.
The roof of the bar collapsed Saturday as other brick buildings down the block crumbled, and family members learned she was the only one inside who didn’t survive.
“She loved her family, loved to cook,” said her cousin Wes Hilliard. “She lived a good life. She was an amazing person who loved big.”
Elsewhere in Sulphur, Jamie Pittman Johnson was surveying the damage Sunday.
“This was my store,” Johnson said, gesturing to the remains of Snack Shack East. “We were a couple of blocks over when we saw the power flashes, trying to get to the store, because I knew we had two employees working, and I couldn’t get them on the phone.”
Johnson said power lines were down everywhere as she tried to get to the store.
“We tried to take back roads,” she said. “I finally got ahold of one of my girls, and she was freaking out. I told them to go inside the cooler, because that’s the standard shelter in a convenience store; it’s usually in the center of the store. But if my girls had been in that cooler, they wouldn’t have made it.”
Johnson said the employees took shelter in the women’s bathroom instead.
“It was the only room that remained intact on that end of the store,” she said, adding both employees were uninjured and were extricated by firefighters. “I have nothing but good things to say about Sulphur Fire and Rescue, and I think Davis was there, too. I was on (the phone) with 911, and I don’t think it was more than five minutes before a guy pulled up, suited up and ready.”
The town’s newspaper planned to publish this week, despite the damage.
“We live less than a mile away, but last night it took us more than an hour to get here,” said Kathy John, publisher of the weekly newspaper, the Sulphur Times-Democrat. She spent Monday helping her staff move equipment from the downtown newsroom to her nearby home.
The paper hasn’t missed a printing in 82 years, she said, and “we’re not going to now.”
The National Weather Service issued back-to-back-to-back tornado warnings for Murray County at 10:20 p.m., 10:38 p.m. and 11:13 p.m.
‘We heard what was coming’
Montana Riggle and Faith Travis were in Davis when a tornado struck their area.
“We heard what was coming, so we went to (Travis’) house, because she has an underground shelter,” Riggle said. “We sat back and listened to what was going on.”
Travis said she was reading in a group chat for her classes when the tornado hit.
“A couple of kids in my class were talking about the places they worked got blown over or their family’s business got blown over,” she said. “You hear about stuff like this all the time, but when it’s people you know, it’s crazy.”
They said local residents wandered the streets, some just to see what happened, and others to begin the cleanup. The smell of natural gas and gasoline was in the air.
‘The craziest night’
The National Weather Service reported Sunday that a “potent late April storm system produced an outbreak of tornadoes and other severe weather” from late Saturday morning through the evening hours and early morning hours of Sunday. Excessive rainfall of 4 to 8.75 inches produced severe flash flooding and river flooding across parts of Oklahoma and western north Texas. Hail up to 3 inches in diameter and severe wind gusts up to 60 mph were observed during this event, according to the NWS. Teams from NWS Norman were conducting damage path surveys in Oklahoma Sunday.
Pontotoc County Emergency Management Director Chad Letellier said there were two confirmed tornadoes in his area, and 10 tornado warnings were issued. He said the emergency operations center was extremely busy Saturday night and early Sunday morning as staff struggled to keep up with all the supercell storms that entered the county from the south.
“That was the craziest night I’ve ever had as an emergency manager here,” Letellier said. “I can’t imagine having to do that by myself, like I did for the first 10 years of this job. I had four people in the EOC helping me, and it was still chaos at times.”
Letellier said most of the damage in Pontotoc County was due to flooding, which affected roads, bridges and culverts. Crews made four water rescues in the county overnight. One occurred in a construction area on Oklahoma 99 between Ada and Fittstown. Another was reported near Pickett on County Road 3490, and then two more were in Byng. The Mesonet weather-recording site in southern Pontotoc County measured 6.06 inches of rain, while Sulphur saw 6.94 inches, the most reported in the state.
“I have seen a lot of flooding in our county, but I’m seeing stuff this morning that I have never seen before,” Letellier said on Sunday, “and I think it’s because the rain came so fast. We didn’t get an exorbitant amount of rain; I think we ended up with around 5.5 inches, but it just came so stinking fast.”
The Red Cross has established a shelter at Crossway First Baptist Church in Sulphur.
Residents in other states were also digging out from storm damage. A tornado in suburban Omaha, Neb., demolished homes and businesses Saturday as it moved for miles through farmland and into subdivisions, then slammed an Iowa town.
The tornado damage began Friday afternoon near Lincoln, Neb. An industrial building in Lancaster County was hit, causing it to collapse with 70 people inside. Several were trapped, but everyone was evacuated, and the three injuries were not life-threatening, authorities said.
One or possibly two tornadoes then spent around an hour creeping toward Omaha, leaving behind damage consistent with an EF3 twister, with winds of 135 to 165 mph said Chris Franks, a meteorologist in the National Weather Service’s Omaha office.
Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen and Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds spent Saturday touring the damage and arranging for assistance for the damaged communities. Formal damage assessments are still underway, but the states plan to seek federal help.
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