The Turtle Teaches

I live in Claremore, Oklahoma, just 30 miles Northeast of Tulsa, with my husband, two dogs, and a cat. Even though destructive tornadoes are a fact of life in Oklahoma, the city of Claremore has for the most part been spared from major storm damage in modern history.  

Claremore, OK, 30 miles NE of Tulsa. Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, Seth Ilys

Will Rogers Memorial, Claremore, OK, public domain

When we first moved here from Houston, Texas, my work at Rogers State University (RSU) found me in a meeting with the principal chief of the Cherokee Indians, a tribe that has lived in Northeast Oklahoma since the early 1800’s.

Preparatory Hall at Rogers State University (where I office), Fair Use

During our meeting, the subject of tornadoes came up. The Chief told me to protect my home from bad storms, I should find the shell of a tortoise that had died on my property and place it in the northwest corner of my house.

He said that with a smile on his face, so I did that with a smile on my face; and for almost 20 years we had no tornado damage. In recent years we have considered installing a tornado shelter, but since there always seems to be competing priorities for a limited coin purse, we had not acted on the shelter.

This Memorial Day weekend our small town experienced a strong tornado on the ground causing severe damage to many neighborhoods, schools, and businesses. Three months later, our community is still trying to rebuild and recover. A few moments before the storm hit, the City of Claremore sounded the tornado sirens as we were watching the local weather news featuring their team of storm chasers following the tornadoes around the greater Tulsa area.

Immediately following the sirens, very high wind gusts arrived as we sought safety with our pets in an interior bathroom. Those gusts quickly turned into an EF-4 tornado that passed on the ground one-eighth of a mile from our home. The wind rattled our house so much that one of our dead-bolted doors vibrated open as tree limbs and broken shrubs blew into our bedroom!

The severe swirling winds lasted less than three minutes. Even though the tornado traveled west-to-east along Route 66 just a few blocks from our small neighborhood (“our Hood”), we suffered only many downed trees and the loss of power for several days. Maybe the Cherokee Turtle Magic was still at work!

mleckert82, Pixabay, rotated

Lesson Learned & Action Taken

One lesson we learned is location of a tornado shelter is critical. The place we had selected and were preparing was too far from our house. With our three pets and ourselves we never could have gotten to where we had identified as the “right” location. To get to our planned shelter, we would have had to travel with our pets down steps from our porch, walk across a patio and onto the ground, walk around the corner of a guest house, and into the shelter. If a storm came up quickly like the Memorial Day twister, it would likely catch us out in the open and unprotected. Lesson Learned.

Following the wake-up call, we knew we needed a better plan for locating an above-ground storm shelter so we could quickly get into it from inside our house. My husband Gerry thoroughly researched walk-in tornado shelters, and he and our master carpenter friend Bill created a plan to locate a storm shelter anchored to a concrete pad outside our bedroom wall and frame an add-on room to enclose the shelter with an access door from the bedroom. With this plan, we think we can be in the shelter within seconds of a warning without ever going outside.

Now, to find the perfect shelter! Three weeks ago, we visited a showroom of shelters in Perry, Oklahoma. The company, called Ground-Zero Shelters, has three above ground and three below ground models based on size. The company has been in existence for over twenty years and has built and installed over 135,000 shelters across the country. We’ve picked a model large enough to shelter us, our pets, and others who may be with us.

Locating the shelter in the wrong place could have been immeasurably costly with lives at risk. Turtle magic notwithstanding, we are grateful for our wakeup call to action.

I hope this short essay is informative and helpful to others in preparing for weather emergencies. Yes, my husband and I are older now and we find ourselves not running but preparing shelter against the wind! Thanks, Bob Seger.