Twister rips through small community southeast of McAlester’s city limits

By James Beaty
Senior Editor

May 12, 2008 12:59 pm

— ARCH — Billie Jean Cohen looked at a bird bath in her front yard on Sunday after some of her friends and family members found the scattered pieces and set it back up for her.
“Some of the guys did it,” she said. “They were trying to make me feel a little better.”
They could put the bird bath together again, but behind her, her home had been totally destroyed. Only a few damaged, leaning walls remained.
The entire roof to her house had been torn away by the tornado which touched down southwest of Hartshorne around 5:30 p.m.
The National Weather Service gauged the storm as an EF-2 tornado, with maximum winds of from 110 to 120 miles per hour.
It tore through the rural Arch and Blue Valley communities, leaving destruction in its wake.
Some of the heaviest damage occurred where the Cohens live in Arch and at the Blue Valley Ranch, southwest of Hartshorne.
Next to Billie Jean Cohen’s house, her brother and sister-in-law, Geronimo and Lisa Cohen, also lost their home.
On the other side of what used to be her house, her brother Rhode Cohen’s home had also been damaged, but had at least been left standing.
Many of the pieces of the Cohen’s lives had been scattered through the pasture and woodlands around their homes — but it could have been much worse.
Billie Jean’s 19-year-old son, Justin Carshall, had been home alone when the tornado struck the remote area.
While the tornado ripped away the roof and part of the walls of their home, her son escaped with cuts and bruises, she said.
Next door, at Geronimo and Lisa Cohen’s place, no one had been at home when the tornado tore apart their home.
“Thank God no one got hurt,” Geronimo said Sunday as friends helped them salvage what they could.
In the midst of the disaster, Lisa worked to give their horses tetanus shots. Several of their animals had been injured by flying debris or by being tossed around by the force of the storm.
Across the ridge from the Cohens’ place, Nancy Drumgold and her husband, Jess Drumgold, watched on Saturday as the tornado headed toward the Blue Valley Ranch.
Nancy Drumgold said they ran inside the laundry room to their house when the tornado hit.
“My husband was in the Air Force, “ she said. “It sounded like a B-52 landed on the back patio.”
Drumgold said her husband’s cow pony, which he had owned for 20 years, died from the storm. Another six horses were injured.
The storm also destroyed barns and blew away equipment.
Back at the Cohen place on Sunday, the family continued to try and save what they could.
“Everybody takes life for granted,” Geronimo Cohen said in a voice that indicated that he does not.
He looked at the debris around what used to be his home.
“You never know,” he said.
His sister also looked at the scattered pieces of their homes.
“This is so unreal,” Billie Jean said, surveying the damage.
It seems like a dream, she said.
“This is so unreal. You want to wake up.”
“God’s got a better place for us,” she said. “One day, you won’t have to go through this.”
Contact James Beaty at jbeaty@mcalesternews.com.

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