Barnsdall Family Cleaning Up After Monday Storms

People in Barnsdall are cleaning up Tuesday night after a possible tornado destroyed several homes and caused lots of other damage.

Neighbors have been helping each other clean up the debris and help make repairs.

Cleaning up all the damage could take weeks, maybe even months.

“All this stuff was over here and on this side, and it ended up back there,” said Susan Love, who lives in Barnsdall.

Love’s house and many others on her street have holes in the roof and debris on the lawn.

She and her neighbors have spent all day picking up the pieces.

“I couldn’t even count how many people were down here,” said Love. “There were chainsaws that ran most of the night last night, most of the day today, you can hear them all on the other blocks. We had people that I didn’t even know who were down here helping.”

Love has lived in Barnsdall all her life- and this is her first time seeing this much storm damage.

“We’ve been through the high winds and the typical Oklahoma storms we usually get,” said Love. “But not like this.”

Now, her family is finding all of their missing things and trying to move forward.

She’s thankful all of her family members are okay.

“All this stuff can be replaced, we can clean it up, and we will be fine,” said Love. “But we can’t replace people.”

Love hopes people will see this as a reminder to pay close attention to weather during storm season.

“Take it seriously,” said Love. “I know we get kind of lax because nothing like that has ever happened here really, in my lifetime it has not. We took it serious last night and it was a good thing we did.”

The National Weather Service hasn’t yet said if this is the result of a tornado and if so, how strong it was.