Big Mess Big Cleanup: Tulsa's June Storm 2023

Digging Out of a Storm with Friends and Family

Tulsa just experienced a serious summer storm about two weeks ago. By “serious” I mean 90 mile per hour wind gusts reeking havoc in much of the city. The angry wind took out telephone poles, trees and wooden fences across the metro. Close areas like Broken Arrow were also hit, but the damage was less severe. I finally got my power back almost a full week later. Lineman from all over the country were called on to assist with the rebuild. A quick survey of the wreckage told me it would take a while to get back to normal.

The worst storms always happen without warning, at least that’s my experience. The weather showed a storm moving into the area but I don’t remember thinking it would be a seek shelter kind of night. My preference is always to have storms while I’m sleeping. Saturday night delivered. The window in my bedroom fell out on to my feet (it didn’t break) when a strong gust pushed it open. I has cleaned it recently and I guess I didn’t close it properly. My quickly awakened mind was a little confused as to what the hard substance was on top of my feet. Groggily I got out of bed and closed it back in place, locking it properly this time.

The carnage around me was unmistakable as I looked out the window at the broken limbs strewn around the yard. My neighbor’s massive tree had split near the top. The branches were hanging down into my yard. The fan quit spinning, alerting me to the lack of power in the house. I walked to the living room to get a better glimpse at my front yard. It was worse than in the back, limbs, leaves and random trash from neighbors who’d had their fences blown over formed a coalition of the broken in my yard. The good news was that my Santé Fe was unharmed. Thank God for that. Heavy limbs surrounded my driveway on both sides but my car was untouched.

I couldn’t see the roof but nothing was sticking through and I hadn’t heard a loud crack. In addition, my garage in the rear of the house was also untouched. I knew it would be a big cleanup the next day but relief filled my head at the lack of serious damage. I went back to sleep expecting to get to work Sunday morning. It happened to be Father’s Day but golf would have to wait for a more suitable climate. Fortunately, my dad offered to come in help me cleanup and bring Joyce (my stepmom). My mom texted me to find out about the damage and also, offered to help. She took me to Lowes and I got a $200 chainsaw. Even Lowes was running on a generator. Dimmed lights and frantic customers in the store signaled a catastrophic city wide event.

It was tough to find out how extensive the storm was across the city. Obviously my part of town was a disaster. We couldn’t access the main roads nearby. Either the lights were out because of the power or fallen trees had made large swathes inaccessible. This would be the case for midtown Tulsa until at least Thursday the following week. Some have generators but gas because a premium item because a lot of stations didn’t have power. The ones that did, ran out quicker. It wasn’t just because of generators but the number of cars lining up for available fuel. The additional number of utility trucks in the area put an additional strain on gas as well.

Nearly all of my neighbors had limbs down. Sunday morning turned into a mandatory clean up day. If you drove down the street at 10:00 a.m. you would see homeowners’ hauling tree branches to the curb. You would hear revving chainsaws ripping into fresh limbs. You might smell the sawdust piling up in neat rows in the wet grass. All my neighbors got the memo and promptly headed for the street. The church up the road even sent its Sunday morning parishioners down the road to give us a hand. That was truly a wonderful gesture, and seriously needed. My elderly neighbors needed it the most. They had a tree hit the corner of their house. I helped them for a few minutes while my parents were working in my yard. I left my chainsaw with one of the church members to use on the tree trunk. He got through most of it before the chain slipped off.

Disasters like this bring out the best in people. There is something about seeing a neighbor in need that makes you want to act. We all coalesce around a common goal, for a time, and finish the task at hand. For me, I had family members willing to come leave their homes and spend a few hours getting sweaty and risking accident. That might not seem like much, but a lot of people don’t even have that. It’s true that theft increases when homes are unoccupied, it increases the amount of lawlessness in general. But the help I see from strangers overwhelms the criminal element. I’m a blessed man.

Now back to work.