Two decades later residents still remember October tornado like it was yesterday
Twenty years ago this month, Cordell faced one of its biggest disasters in modern-day history. On October 9, 2001, an F3 tornado tore through the northeastern part of town leaving tons of destruction in its path. For many residents such as then Cordell mayor Phil Kliewer, that is a day that they will never forget.
The Tornado
The tornado began south of Cordell near Glenn English and Kiowa Street. It would go on to move throughout the northeastern part of town beginning with an intensity of F0 to F1, moving on to an F2 around Main and Orient Street, before becoming an F3 tornado near Crider Road and 9th Street and ultimately making its way out of town around 14th and Crider Road.
“We had about a third of our community that was torn up, basically leveled many parts of it. Housing I think it was finally about 250 structures. Utilities were down for days,” Kliewer said. “It was just a devastating event that kind of came out of nowhere… I can’t remember exactly what day it was, but it was 5:05 because the courthouse clock stopped. And everybody knew for a while, that was the time the tornado hit.”
That day, according to the National Weather Service out of Norman, 19 tornadoes formed in Oklahoma, and according to Kliewer, most eyes, at least those of the local weather stations, had initially been on a storm forming near Canute.
“I was in my neighbor’s shelter with my kids and wife and his kids and wife, and we looked up to the east. We knew something was up because we could hear, there was kind of an eerie silence, but it was still sunny. But to the east were all these, this glistening, it looked like a snow globe at Christmas that had gotten shaken up. Those glistening particles were really two by fours and lumber,” Kliewer said. “It was pretty incredible to see that glisten. At some point, I looked to my neighbor friend and he said, ‘That’s, that’s building debris.’ And it was really high. It was up over the trees where we could see it.”
While some, like Kliewer, took shelter but were out of the tornado’s path, others were not so lucky. Former Cordell Elementary School principal Alan Hull was outside looking at the clouds before being surprised to find out that the tornado would be going right over the house he was in.
“I was down at a local friend’s shop when the storm sirens went off, and I hurried back to where my mother-in-law’s house was and got her into an interior closet in the middle of the house. Then I went outside just cloud-watching, and I won’t ever do that again,” Hull said. “By the time I could hear the roar, there was very little time for anything but run in the house, and I jumped in a bathtub.”
Hull’s mother-in-law’s home had been directly in the path of the tornado though luckily Hull said the tornado seemed to float above the home having only taken off the roof of the structure.
“I looked around and there was just a standard size bathmat was all I could cover up with. But I do remember thinking as I was in there that, I’m 6’5”, but I felt like I got most of that 6’5” underneath that little bitty bathmat,” he said. “I remember high pressure in the ears and all that, but then all of a sudden the roof came off the house. Seemed like shortly after that, I’d looked up and there’s blue skies and it even seemed like birds chirping… There were shrapnel glass shards in the sheetrock and around in the house. All sorts of things could have been way worse than what it was. My mother-in-law was a tiny lady She said she was holding onto the interior doorknob on the inside of the closet and it was trying to come open. But she didn’t let go. So, we were both fine.”
Though many residents would get to work as soon as the storm had passed, others had to get to work while the tornado tore through town on its way out.
Zonelle Rainbolt, editor of the Cordell Beacon at the time, along with a former employee went out to take photos of the tornado and the damage it caused after it was apparent that they were in no immediate danger.
“As soon as it was clearly over, everybody pretty much scattered. The man who was working at the Beacon at the time grabbed one of the digital cameras and I grabbed the other one and we just began taking the photos,” Rainbolt said. “There was this immediate thing about ‘How do I check on my family and our loved ones’. We had just been about to go to press. I mean, we were right there. As soon as I could get my mind together, I called Clinton [Daily News] and said, ‘Clearly, we’re not going to be there for a while.’”
The Aftermath
Once the storm had cleared and the tornado was on its way out of Cordell, residents were greeted with a devastating scene. According to a report done by NWS Norman, the Oklahoma State Emergency Management Office had said that approximately 477 single-family homes and 40 businesses were damaged, and 132 homes and 22 businesses were considered uninhabitable. Damage was estimated near 100 million dollars, while nine injuries and zero fatalities were reported.
“We were out trying to pick through what we could, many of the areas you couldn’t get through because the electrical lines were down and power was not restored for a while. But [City Manager] Bob Lambert and I were combing through a lot of this, along with the two Chiefs, and there wasn’t much left of the Southern part of town,” Kliewer said. “It impacted the whole community in one way or another, but Gary Coburn kept working, he was the police chief, he lost his home and kept working. He was probably up for about two or three days as was [Fire Chief] Tommy Merrill.”
Upon exiting the destruction of his mother-in-law’s home, Hull headed straight to the school to see what damage had been caused. He was greeted by a torn-up building with glass and debris everywhere. Books in the library were all scattered throughout. The roof of the elementary school had been ripped apart with air conditioning units gone.
“It was so much of a blessing that school was out,” Hull said. “In the breezeway between the auditorium and the elementary lobby, the windows were blown out and it was like a warzone up and down the halls. Well, at that time school storm procedure was to get next to an interior wall in the hall. That would have been disastrous… A day or two into it, or it might’ve been a week into it, I slowed down enough to go up on the roof and it was fascinating to see. You know, tornados go up and down and around and it was kind of heading northeast, and you could see on East Hill, there were multiple houses destroyed.”
For many, such as Rainbolt, this was the first time seeing a tornado impact their community.
“I had seen tornadic damage before, but it was always somebody else’s community, It wasn’t to mine. You would see homes that were destroyed and I cried,” she said. “A few days later, you would be driving east up there by the school, and you would realize that you kinda didn’t know where you were because all your visual landmarks were gone. It was very super emotional and that didn’t go away right away. It actually grew for a while because you’re going, ‘I can’t believe that so-and-so’s house is gone or that their business was destroyed’”.
The Community Support
Despite the extensive damage done to the town, Kliewer, Hull, and Rainbolt all agreed that Cordell’s ability to come together and help one another out was an amazing sight to see.
“It was a trying time. Within just a few hours we had relief trucks. We had the national guard. We had FEMA. Actually, Oklahoma Emergency Management was calling. We had all kinds of local police departments and emergency responders combing through the area besides our police. It really showed a lot of partnership between the communities out here,” Kliewer said.
Cordell’s ability to get to work, help each other out, and bounce back from the damage done, left an impact on residents as well as those that were there to help, going so far as to be coined the “Cordell Standard” due to the way the town handled the situation according to Kliewer.
“We were called the Cordell Standard and that, I think, is probably as important as anything. Even the people from the state that came out were so amazed at the response and the community support for relief, for rescue, for all the things that were part of a devastating event. But they were really, really complementary and said, ‘Hey. This is the Cordell Standard.’ And I totally agreed with them that we couldn’t have done it without all these partners that came together”, Kliewer said. “Our efforts coming together as a community was tested that day and the days subsequent to that, and I think we came out a stronger community, even though we were debilitated structurally, physically, but not morally. We kept it going, and you know, we built back, I think, a better, stronger town.”
Rainbolt echoed Kliewer’s sentiment saying she had witnessed residents immediately getting to work after the storm had passed.
“It’s amazing how the whole town, it seemed almost as if people knew what their jobs should be… It wasn’t like anyone had to be told what to do. They just knew that ‘This is a job that needs to be done, and I can do it.’ And they went and did it,” Rainbolt said. “It was amazing because it was so instantaneous and so from the heart, but it wasn’t surprising… It’s just a measure of trust that everybody had. Phil [Kliewer] was such an amazing leader through that. He had contacts, not just throughout the state, but throughout the country. If we had any other person on earth that was our mayor, we would not have recovered as we did.”
Kliewer had also said that the town had received an abundance of help from all around, so much so that some help even had to be turned away. An example of this being all the churches in town offering their facilities to the elementary school as their temporary schooling location.
“It was an uplifting experience. When I came back to Cordell, it’s my hometown, I grew up here, I knew it was a nice caring community, but the amount of outreach for the school from the citizens of Cordell, from the churches of Cordell, as I said the junior and high school was not damaged, but the elementary was, and I was offered my choice of all the church facilities,” Hull said. “Nothing was ever said, but I felt like when I chose the facilities that had what we needed the best, that the ones who had offered and I bypassed them because of something, you know, they were disappointed. Like I had hurt their feelings because they wanted to help. And that’s just typical smalltown Oklahoma, and I learned a great deal of respect for my own hometown because they really came through.”
Today
Looking back, Kliewer said that the 2001 tornado was an event that left a major impact on many of the residents of Cordell saying that “a third of that population was directly affected, but 100% was indirectly affected.”
Though twenty years have passed, the effects caused by the tornado that day not only left some physical spots indicative of its damage here in town but have also left many memories in the minds of those that experienced it firsthand.
“I pay way closer attention to weather alerts now than I did prior to that,” Hull said.
One thing was collectively agreed on amongst the people interviewed here. Cordell did an amazing job coming together as a community and building itself back up immediately after the destruction.
“I was never prouder to be a resident and citizen of Cordell than I was that day and the weeks that followed. If our country could pull together now like Cordell did then, we would be on top of the world,” Rainbolt said. “The people in Cordell were and are the most amazing ever. Nobody complained. Everybody just dug in and did what they could do and helped where they were needed. Amazing, amazing bunch of people.”
Looking to today and thinking on whether Cordell could come together like that once more, Kliewer said that he is hopeful that the Cordell Standard would once again come to light.
“I certainly hope so. You know, the city leadership which we had, I believe, not trying to sound ‘braggadocious,’ but we had really good leaders. We had department heads that knew what they were doing. They responded to this quickly and effectively,” he said.
“So yeah, I think it has to be tested. Unfortunately, you don’t want to test it with one of these again, but there’s always an event that tests the mettle of the community and the leadership of the community. And that certainly was our test.”