Lightning Storm!

The worst storm to hit Tulsa since 2007 leaves 200,000 without power, thousands of downed trees, and 2000 relief workers flying in. Is it big news if no one says it is?

12:20am Sunday morning. Woke up fast. The bedroom windows were like nothing I had ever seen, flashes every quarter second, thunder too, but it was the light, it was a lightning storm…

“Are you ok over there.”

A text, from my daughter, in the house next door here in Tulsa. She told me the next morning she didn’t dare go outside to check, not with the tornado siren moaning and the 100mph winds. I ventured onto the porch anyway…

“Mom, come look outside,” she said, at 6am. There were downed branches up and down the street. I thought maybe we should try to drag them, you would not be able to drive around, but they were pretty big. Since we’d lost power, presumably from the storm, we decided to get some coffee and survey any damage. These pics are all from within a few blocks. We have many more shots but understand this was 36 hours ago and we still have no power and the laptop, she gonna die soon…

We continued driving, slowly, for an hour. There were no working traffic lights, metal street signs had bent at 90-degree angles and now skimmed the sidewalk, and who knew trampolines were so popular in Tulsa? We passed at least three large ones, which must have become projectiles and were now hanging from trees or cantilevered over fences. There were crushed cars, crushed houses, and an uncountable number of downed trees, certainly in the thousands, some of them blocking people from leaving their homes any way other than foot. Most people, native Oklahomans, told us they immediately went down to their basements or into their storm shelters when they heard the sirens. Several mentioned it was the worst weather seen since the ice storm of 2007…

“At least it’s warm now,” said one woman, still in her bathrobe. “And how’s your house.” We told her it was fine. “Praise the lord,” she said.

Our phones did not have a lot of juice but I tried looking for news of the storm. Nothing. Maybe it was too early. We kept driving. Everything was closed but for one coffee shop. It was now 9am and getting hot and we were due at an Uchi baby naming ceremony at a lake in Sapulpa. The skies still seemed a little ominous but it was a beautiful morning, a simple beautiful event. The baby’s grandpa Lester teold me, he’d run around with Tafv’s late dad Tim when they were young men, getting in young men trouble, “Oh, nothing really bad,” he said, though they did spend one night in the clink together!

After the ceremony we all headed out to have a breakfast - Cafe USA was closed, no power. Everything turned out to be closed, and on drive back to Tulsa, man, the devastation was big. Behold this pic of my daughter’s friend standing in his fallen pecan tree.

I checked for news again. Still nothing. I texted friends: What were they hearing? It had to be headline stuff…

“Only news I’m following involves Trout and Ohtani,” Matt texted. Sarah said she’d seen nothing. Weird.

We spent the day gathering what provisions were could - candles from a Joann’s in Broken Arrow, some take-out chicken.

“You know what we should do tonight? We should watch an apocalyptic movie,” said my daughter. Uh… We crocheted by candlelight instead.

This morning, there were still A) 200,000 without power and B) no word of any of this except the local paper. One would think the largest weather event in Tulsa since 2007, and 2000 workers flying in from out of state to help with the clean-up, and an emergency proclamation by the mayor telling people there will not be any electricity until likely Saturday, would rate a few words on CNN or in the NYT. Can you imagine if this had happened in Brooklyn? There would be an outpouring of news, on-camera interviews, thoughts and prayers from the White House.

It is the case that, as far as we know, there has been no loss of life. Grazie dio. People are helping their neighbors, people are figuring out how to live without stop lights, and there was a diner open downtown this morning, where they let you charge your phones and greeted customers at the counter by asking, “Are you powerless?”

My daughter and I tried to book a hotel room, for some power, some heat relief, some TV. Nice dice. Maybe we could buy a battery operated fan at Target, seeing as the temperature was above 90. Sold out. Also,? Target was a trip, the store in near darkness, people walking slowly around, trying to see, trying to find each other, calls of, “Mom!” ringing through the store and from somewhere, glass breaking.

“It’s like being in a movie,” my daughter said, except that people were calm, there were no zombies (I don’t think) and no looting, or not yet. Let’s see how long it takes to get the power on.

I was peeved earlier today about the lack of news about what feels like a big event affecting a lot of people. Maybe there’s something about it now, but the lack of coverage proved to me that if an event is not happening in one of the big media cities, or is a potential political football, it doesn’t. But I’m not mad anymore. I’ll write those stories. Here’s to the 12-year-old girls down the block working two chainsaws, and whoever it was that secretly paid for the breakfast of the girl next to me, and neighbors helping neighbors, and the good people coming to help.