PIEDMONT, Okla. — One word explained the high-noon traffic jam at this rural Canadian County intersection the day after tornadoes spawned in a swarm of storms took out dozens of houses and killed at least nine people in Oklahoma.
“Looters,” Oklahoma City police Sgt. Melissa Abrahamsen said Wednesday as she supervised the eastbound access to 220th Street where it crosses Piedmont Road. “We had looters.”
Abrahamsen allowed only drivers with proof of residence - family, handymen, insurance adjusters and ex-husbands had to wait at the intersection until a resident arrived to vouch for each driver and escort him in.
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Farther north, police, firefighters and volunteers searched the woods for a missing 3-year-old boy, Ryan Hamil. His 15-month-old brother, Cole, died in a tornado. His mother, Catherine, was in the hospital, as was his 5-year-old sister, Cathleen. His father, Hank Hamil, had been off for the wheat harvest and returned late Tuesday, friends said.
At First Baptist Church, pastor Gary Caldwell received bad news and good as he mingled among volunteers who served barbecue sandwiches and handed out water, bed linens and other necessities of life.
“I’ve seen tornado damage before,” he said, “but this one house ... it’s like the thing picked it up, chewed it up like a blender and set it down.”
One family survived the tornado in a shelter, he said, but the debris trapped them underground until neighbors arrived to pull it off.
A moment after Caldwell related that story, a volunteer leaned into his ear and told him of another house leveled, and Caldwell reacted as if the volunteer had stomped one of his feet.
Some worked through the night and were still going Wednesday. At 1 a.m.Wednesday, veterinarian Elizabeth Baca stood in the bright illumination of work lights and stitched the eyelid of a horse. Twelve hours later, she was piling supplies in her red king-cab farm truck and heading out for a house call.
“I’ve got another one to stitch,” she said.
Back at the rural traffic jam, a Red Cross volunteer assisted her husband and Abrahamsen as they directed traffic.
Like pastor Caldwell, she has seen plenty of tornado damage, and this storm was bad. But she declined to rate it as the worst.
“A lot of people lost a lot of things,” said the woman, who asked that her name not be published. “For the people who got hurt, it’s always the worst.”
A series of violent storms have slammed into Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas and
Arkansas since Sunday, killing at least 140 people - most in Joplin, Mo. - and injuring hundreds, as well as destroying thousands of homes and businesses.
On Tuesday, tornadoes struck just northwest of Oklahoma City; the Kansas community of St. John, about 100 miles west of Wichita; and in Johnson and Franklin counties in Arkansas, where four people died.
Information for this article was contributed by The Oklahoman.
Front Section, Pages 5 on 05/26/2011