During the midnight storm, residents in southeast Oklahoma City who were severely damaged by the storm reported waking up to warnings on their phones.
According to preliminary National Weather Service assessments, the predicted EF-3 tornado struck southeast Oklahoma City early in the morning.
Residents of the area around SE 89th St and Sooner Rd tell Fox 25 News that they received notifications about the storm on their cell phones when they woke up.
“It took us a second to realize what it was,” Katie Anderson stated.
When Anderson and her husband heard debris striking their home, they immediately understood it was a severe storm alert, even though at first she believed her church alarm was going off.
“I could only see when there was flashes of lightning while we were going but it was just like random things moving,” she stated. “So, it wasn’t like your normal thunderstorm.”
She claimed that debris, including another person’s boat, crashed into their backyard. Additionally, their roof collapses in several locations, including a few feet from their bed, due to the weight of the heavy downpour.
Anderson’s home in Shawnee was damaged by a storm in April 2023. Less than two years after she and her husband Jackson relocated to southeast Oklahoma City, another devastating storm struck.
“Every single thing is replaceable, but the people aren’t,” Anderson stated. “For us to walk away with no injuries and absolutely no issues at all, that means way more to me than whether or not I have a couch or a roof.”
Anderson said she feels fortunate compared to what some of her neighbors are going through.
“The damage is incomprehensible,” a woman in this SE OKC neighborhood told us.
Her home in Shawnee was damaged by the April 2023 tornado. She recently moved here and her new home was damaged overnight. @OKCFOX #okwx pic.twitter.com/8QWROFxEfE— Jamison Keefover (@JamisonTVNews) November 3, 2024
There are houses in the neighborhood that are roofless or have lost their second storeys. A truck and trailer were flung into a tree in a nearby yard. Storm drains are inundated and powerlines are down.
“It’s really bad down there,” Joshua Jetto stated.
He claimed that after hearing the tornado sirens, his family awoke to the sound of debris smashing their windows.
Many claimed that they only ever heard the alarms on their cell phones and never heard the sirens. According to Shane Barker, he thought he and his dog had only a few seconds to seek cover before the tornado struck.
Read Also:Â Oklahoma Hit Hard: Tornadoes and Heavy Rains Leave at Least 11 Injured
In the southeast Oklahoma City neighborhood, a number of residents said that they were unable to enter their storm shelters in time and had to quickly head to a closet or restroom.
There was little time to admire the devastation after the storm passed because Sunday morning and afternoon saw further waves of rain. Through the intense rain, people hurried to remove debris, repair roofs, and save what they could.
