Recovery Efforts Underway In Seminole, Volunteers Needed

People in Seminole are rolling up their sleeves and cleaning up following a tornado that hit the small town. City Officials told News 9 progress is being made with cleanup but there's still a long way to go. 

Steve Saxon, the City Manager, said 43 homes were destroyed and 500 damaged. Despite the extensive devastation they are grateful for the help of Oklahomans across the state. 

“We are going to be just short of the FEMA designation to declare us a FEMA disaster, so if they want to keep their donations local, we encourage them to donate to the Seminole Foundation. 

Ten buildings downtown were destroyed by the tornado and several others have significant damage, 

“We have some other types of building materials that are still laying on the ground that need to be cleaned up. People are fixing their homes; we have homeowners that can’t get on their roof and do it themselves…it’s just a lot of issues that need to be taken care of,” said Jeff Griffin, the Mayor of Seminole. 

Griffin said the days following the tornado have been spent clearing trees from roadways and cleaning up building material. 

“We have picked up 2,000 yards and we have at least that much more to go. That is where we could probably use additional help with volunteers. There is just a large number of trees that didn’t survive,” he said. 

He added that the biggest need right now is more volunteers. 

“We are steadily making progress, but it is going to be a while until we are back to normal for sure,” said the mayor. 

City leaders are overwhelmed by the support Oklahomans have already shown. 

“You know the Oklahoma spirit; we always have people volunteering to help. We’ll learn from it, we will be able to respond if it ever happens again,” he said. 

Those who would like to volunteer to help should contact the Seminole disaster hotline at 405-458-5510.