By Justin Juozapavicius
Power was slowly being switched back on Thursday in Anadarko after a tornado raked the southwestern Oklahoma city, damaging dozens of homes and businesses and downing trees and power lines.
Local officials were surveying the damage in the town of 6,400, apparently the hardest-hit after severe thunderstorms passed through the state Wednesday night.
A press release issued Thursday afternoon by Anadarko's emergency operations center said there were three injuries, all minor, from the tornado.
The National Weather Service said that twister, rated as an EF-2, was one of at least five that touched down in the state Wednesday. The rating indicates that winds from the twister were likely between 111 and 135 mph.
In Anadarko, at least 40 homes and businesses were damaged and downed power lines led school officials there to cancel classes for the day because of the outages.
The city's downtown was in shambles, with pieces of roof and glass shards littering the streets, said Eddie Ladd, who's run an insurance business downtown for 21 years.
"I'm looking at my roof on the curb here we've been shoveling," said Ladd, who added that it was the first tornado he'd been through since being in business here.
"Hope it's the last one," he said.
Resident Barbara Constien had just taken shelter in the bathroom with her husband when the storm hit.
"All at once this terrific wind," she recalled Thursday. "A thunderous roar hit and we could hear stuff flying all around outside."
There's a hole in her roof, but she fared better than a neighbor on the corner whose house appeared to be a total loss.
"I've heard several legends about a tornado never hitting Anadarko because of the Washita River, that it would kind of split," she said. "That kind of dispelled that."
In northeastern Oklahoma, a 100 mph wind gust blew off parts of the roof at the Lighthouse Mission in Bartlesville, displacing 15 homeless people staying at the shelter.
"Everybody was safe," Naomi Hill, the founder of the mission, said Thursday. "Scared them a little, but everybody's safe."
In Anadarko, power was restored to key city buildings, such as the water and sewer treatment plants, state Department of Emergency Management spokeswoman Michelann Ooten said.
"We are starting to bring power back on to some areas of the community," she said. "That's always good news when you start to see the power coming back on."
Anadarko Police Chief David Edwards encouraged those traveling through the area to exercise extreme caution.
The National Weather Service's Norman office said tornadoes rated at EF-0 touched down in Kay County and Dewey County, with neither causing damage. An EF-1 twister in Noble County took down trees and power lines.
A brief tornado rated at EF-0 developed on the northwest side of Lake Stanley Draper in Cleveland County and moved along the western shore of the lake shortly before 11 p.m. A boat dock at the lake and other small structures suffered damage, along with trees.
