Simpson, a retired Langston chemistry professor, and his wife quickly took cover in a hall as a tornado ripped through a four-home subdivision about 8:10 p.m. A minute later, it was quiet again.
"It was over before I knew what was going on,” Simpson said. "All we felt was a cold wind.”
Simpson found his sunroom destroyed and a riding lawnmower on the bed of his room. The lawnmower had been in a shed, which was nowhere in sight. That wasn’t the worst of the damage in the subdivision.
"We had no idea the amount of devastation to these other houses,” Simpson said.
Residents plan to rebuild The storm destroyed two homes in the subdivision belonging to former Langston University President Ernest L. Holloway and Langston track coach James Hilliard. Two other homes were damaged, Simpson’s and one belonging to Leander Johnson, a computer programmer at Tinker Air Force Base. Only Simpson was at home when the storm hit.
The National Weather Service investigated on Sunday and gave the tornado a preliminary rating of EF-1. The tornado generated wind speeds of 90 to 100 mph, snapping trees and utility poles, according to the weather service. The damage path was about 150 yards wide and less than half a mile long.
Holloway had just moved back into his home after three years of living in Oklahoma City. Much of the roof was torn off, and several interior rooms were heavily damaged or destroyed. A neighbor’s trailer was thrown through the brick facade and into a bedroom.
Yet Holloway could still laugh as he surveyed the damage to his home.
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