DENNING (KFSM)—This week, people are remembering the five-year anniversary of tornadoes that hit Franklin and Johnson Counties.
“All of a sudden we heard, ‘Bam!’ and one tree went down and hit the backside of the house; and then it sounded like a train was coming over,” Sheila Helmert said.
May 24 – 25, 2011 are days Helmert said she will never forget. An EF-4 tornado went through Etna, Denning, Altus and parts of Johnson County in the middle of the night. Winds reached speeds of 170 MPH. It killed three people, destroyed and damaged homes and knocked down trees and power lines in its path.
“We got by the bed and put the covers over us and the next thing we knew, our sheet rock in the top of the ceiling was coming off on top of us,” Helmert said.
She said her family had gone to bed around 11 p.m. on May 24. They didn’t have a storm shelter, so they did what they could to take cover. The home is no longer livable, so the Helmerts use it for storage now. They just said they’re thankful things weren’t worse.
“There was a church at one time [across the street], and it demolished it,” Helmert said. “The trailer over there was turned upside down and demolished.”
Clarissa Williams said she was also home at the time with her husband, son and elderly mother.
“It just came through here and took down about 80 trees of ours and then it hit our house and took the roof off,” she said.
Since the tornado, people pulled together to get the Juanita Burns Community Center/Shelter built in Denning. It can fit about 150 inside during severe weather.
As for the Helmerts, they had a storm shelter installed on their property, six months after the tornado hit, and they use it anytime tornado warnings are issued.
Posted 6:17 pm, May 23, 2016, by Laura Simon
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