Teams Survey Anadarko Storm Damage

Associated Press

ANADARKO, Oklahoma -- Power was slowly being switched on to homes and businesses Thursday in Anadarko after a tornado raked the city in southwestern Oklahoma, damaging dozens of homes and businesses and downing trees and power lines.

Local officials were surveying the damage in the city of 6,400, apparently the hardest-hit after severe thunderstorms passed through the state Wednesday night.

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.

Anadarko Storm Damage

"Everybody was safe," Naomi Hill, the founder of the mission, said Thursday. "Scared them a little, but everybody's safe."

Statewide, about 2,500 people were without power, down from the more than 10,000 outages after the storms blew through.

Public Service Company of Oklahoma estimated around 680 customers out statewide Thursday afternoon, and Oklahoma Gas and Electric reported on its Web site less than 1,800 outages.

PSO spokesman Ed Bettinger said all customers of the utility should have power back on by the end of the day.

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."

National Weather Service meteorologist Christine Riley said teams from that agency were headed to the area on Thursday morning to examine damage to try and determine if a tornado touched down. She said that such a determination could be made by Thursday night.

The local storm report on the Web site for the weather service's Norman office, which is based on preliminary information, had no mention of a tornado in the Anadarko area but several mentions of strong wind gusts.

After the storm hit, downed power lines and large trees on U.S. Highways 62 and 281 made Anadarko inaccessible from the east, the Oklahoma Highway Patrol reported. Authorities limited access to some parts of Anadarko on Thursday because of downed power lines in the area.

On Wednesday night, a tornadic storm was spotted about 6 miles west of Tonkawa in Kay County, but emergency crews didn't find a damage path, said Charles Conaghan, emergency management director for Tonkawa.

"We do have damage in the Noble County area east of Red Rock. We had some trees uprooted," Conaghan said. "We took precautions here, but it was close. It developed right on top us and we didn't have much lead time."

Garfield County Emergency Management Director Mike Honigsberg says tornado sirens sounded in the county as a precaution but there was no confirmed tornado, just half dollar-size hail.

In Midwest City, immediately east of Oklahoma City, four houses were hit by lighting and suffered significant damage, Fire Marshal Jerry Lojka said. Four firefighters suffered minor injuries in fighting blazes caused by the lightning strikes.

A tornado warning was issued for Washington County in northeastern Oklahoma, where a 100 mph wind gust was recorded west of the Bartlesville airport, authorities said.

Wind gusts downed dozens of trees, power lines and fences, said Melissa Pitner, a spokeswoman for Washington County Emergency Management.

"It could have been a lot worse," she said Thursday. "I think we fared well last night."