A Warning, and 68 Minutes Later a Killer Touches Down
Larry W. Smith/European Pressphoto Agency

A trophy cabinet at the school in Tushka, Okla. (population 405), was damaged Thursday evening by a vicious tornado that tore off part of the roof and destroyed dozens of homes.
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
Published: April 15, 2011

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TUSHKA, Okla. — The sound of chain saws filled the air in this rural town on Friday as Jessica Eldridge sifted through a pile of rubble that until last night had been her house, looking for clothing, family photos, pots and pans, any belongings she could salvage.
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Sue Ogrocki/Associated Press

Jessica Eldridge, center, and her grandfather, Ernest Eldridge, right, salvage belongings from what is left of Jessica's home in Tushka, Okla.
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Sue Ogrocki/Associated Press

Jerome Whittington salvaging items from his car in Tushka.
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Rex C. Curry for The New York Times

Family members covered the roof of their damaged home Friday, a day after a tornado in Tushka.
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Rex C. Curry for The New York Times

Mikayla Quinn retrieved items from a mobile home in Tushka that had been across the road.

Somehow her pet dachshund had survived, but she found little else, much of it destroyed or carried away as a vicious tornado destroyed dozens of homes, demolished the town school, ripped apart a tractor-trailer factory and scattered cars and trucks about as though they were toys.

“I broke down last night,” said Miss Eldridge, 23, the mother of a newborn and a toddler. Her red-rimmed eyes were glassy and distant. “My daughter wanted to go home, and she doesn’t understand the wind took the home and it’s blown away.”

At least two people died when the twister touched down here in Tushka, a town of 405 residents, late in the evening Thursday, leaving a trail of destruction a half-mile wide and seven miles long. The storm system moved on to Arkansas, where 80-mile-an-hour winds caused seven more deaths Thursday night. On Friday evening, three suspected tornadoes spawned by the same system touched down in Mississippi, leaving extensive damage and one person with life-threatening injuries in Clinton, about 10 miles from Jackson.

The Oklahoma medical examiner identified the two people who died in Tushka as Ava Walkup, 75, and Sammie Dement, 80. A neighbor said the women, who were sisters, were found buried in the debris of the house Mrs. Dement shared with her husband, who was also seriously injured.

Most people made it to shelter, however. The town received notice of the approaching tornado 68 minutes before it hit. “That, most likely, contributed to the minimal loss of life,” said Walt Zaleski, a warning coordinator meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

The tornado was one of five to touch down in eastern Oklahoma on Thursday just before dusk, the National Weather Service said. Witnesses said they saw several funnel clouds descending from the darkening sky, then they appeared to merge into one twister that entered the town from the southwest.

More than 150 residents rushed into two town shelters near the school and crowded inside, waiting as the winds tore up trees, downed power lines, tore the roofs from buildings and flipped over cars and trucks.

Clay Cole, 53, who lives next-door to the school, said he was on his front porch when he heard the storm. “It sounded like a big locomotive,” he said. “Whoom, whoom, whoom.” He sprinted to the shelter, a 45-foot-long cellar with metal doors built 90 years ago, and stumbled down the stairs.

“It had at least 100 or more people in it — it was full,” he said. “You could hear stuff a-ripping and a-tearing. It lasted three minutes or so until it was over. Then nothing.”

Outside, Alfred Elliot, 64, a truck driver, was driving pell-mell to the shelter with the funnel in his rearview mirror before the tornado touched down. He watched as part of the school’s roof lifted up and disappeared into the air in front of him. The winds blew out the back window of his truck, but somehow spared him and his wife, Linda Elliot, 62. “I was half scared to death,” he said. “God had to be sitting in the pickup and watching over me.”

The storm tore off the top floor of the original school building, built in 1927, scattering brick rubble below. An adjacent gymnasium collapsed and winds knocked down walls and ripped the roof off a newer annex. Somehow the winds left trophies in their cases and many books on shelves.

Michelann Ooten, a spokeswoman for the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management, said at least 50 homes were damaged. Scores of people were left without housing, and the Red Cross has set up a temporary shelter for displaced residents in the nearby town of Atoka.

Throughout the town, trees as large as eight feet in diameter were ripped up at their roots, many falling across streets and highways. Utility poles were snapped off like toothpicks. Large pieces of sheet metal from a factory outside town were twisted up like discarded tissues. A bed rail was driven through a tree. One trailer home had been blown off its foundation and 30 yards into a neighbor’s yard. Upended tractor-trailers made many roads impassible, including the northbound lanes of Interstate 69, officials said.

In Arkansas, most of the fatalities were caused by trees and heavy branches falling on mobile homes, state emergency management officials said. Among the victims was a 6-year-old boy, Devon Adams, of Bald Knob in White County, who was sleeping on a couch in his family’s house when an enormous tree crashed through the ceiling and crushed him, the authorities said.

In St. Francis County, in eastern Arkansas, a double-wide trailer was sent airborne by the fierce winds, killing a woman and injuring her husband, the authorities said. In Pulaski County, the storm killed one man, James Loftis, 56, whose recreational vehicle was crushed by a tree.

Ben Fenwick contributed reporting.
A version of this article appeared in print on April 16, 2011, on page A13 of the New York edition.