Published: May 14, 2008 09:35 am      

Twister victims pick up the pieces

Amber Dalpoas and her mother, Diana Dalpoas, stood in their yard near Blue Valley on Tuesday and pointed to an empty spot next to the family’s house.

That’s the spot where a two-storied cabin had been standing a few days ago.

“We were in it 10 minutes before it disappeared,” Amber said.

Now, there’s nothing left on the spot but a piece of bare ground.

Around back, they pointed out another desolate spot.

On Saturday, it had been covered by a barn with stalls for horses, along with places for sheep, goats and even a chicken coop.

But on Tuesday, not much remained except a few hens trying to lay eggs.

The cabin and other buildings “disappeared” around 5:30 p.m. on Saturday when a tornado which tore into the Arch and Blue Valley areas roared onto Diana and Terry Dalpoas’ place southwest of Hartshorne.

On Tuesday, they were still trying to pick up the pieces. They were also still finding dead animals, along with some lucky survivors.

Sheep and rabbits may have fared the worst. Some horses were injured, but none were killed

A few minutes before the tornado hit, Amber had been adding some finishing touches inside the cabin. She said she had recently subscribed to a weather service on her cell phone.

Learning a storm was approaching, she considered whether to ride it out in the cabin, but decided to go into the main house so she could monitor the action on television.

She also got the bathtub ready in case the family had to take shelter in it, since they didn’t have a storm cellar.

Amber said her father, Terry Dalpoas, took a look out the front door.

“He said ‘Come see if this is what I think it is,”” Amber recalled.

“I never got out the door,” Amber said. Her mother took one look outside and suddenly yelled ‘Run!’’’

The family took time to grab armfuls of their house dogs which had followed them to the door.

“Dad threw the white one to mom” and they caught another by its hind leg before it could get outside, Amber recalled.

As the tornado hit, she heard a tremendous roar.

“It sounded like standing at the base of Niagara Falls,” Amber said.

“It sucked the breath right out of you, but I still had enough to scream.”

After the tornado passed, the family emerged and were shocked by the damage.

Both buildings and animals were gone.

Diana said she asked “Where’s the cabin?”

They said the tornado had sucked up a buckskin horse and dropped it in a pond more than 200 yards away. The horse returned, covered in mud.

“The black horse came from the road,” Diana Dalpoas said.

Bodies of other animals, such as sheep and rabbits, were scattered around the place.

The personal property inside the cabin had been scattered, but Amber made at least one discovery out in a back field that pleased her.

“I found my George Strait CDs and all but one of my Garth Brooks CDs,” she said.

Asked if there had been offers of aid, Diana said “no.”

Since most of the destruction had occurred behind the house, it’s hard for people driving by to see it, she said.

As for the cabin, if no one knew it was there in the first place, they wouldn’t know it was gone.

The family has made one decision as far as the future is concerned.

“We decided instead of a cellar, we want a safe room,” Amber said.

“Even if we’d had a cellar, we’d never made it,” Diana Dalpoas said.

At the Warren Sphan Ranch, foreman Jimmy Adams said he saw debris in the air on Saturday before he saw the tornado.

He watched as it headed to the southeast.

“We could see it up in the air,” he said. “It would drop down, go back up and go down again.”

Meanwhile, up the road and around the bend at the home of Geronimo and Lisa Cohen, family members and friends helped them save what they could.

The Saturday tornado destroyed their home, blew away much of their property and injured their horses and a dog.

Luckily for them, none of the family members were home when the tornado hit. It scattered their property across the pasture and woodlands that surround the area.

Asked if they saved any appliances, Geronimo Cohen said “My icebox and a TV is about all we saved out of it.”

The family had also been able to save a couch and chair and a few clothes.

“All our friends and family helped,” Cohen said. “We pretty well got everything out we could.”

Cohen said he had a 16 foot by 80 foot trailer home he had recently moved onto the property about a quarter mile away, but the tornado destroyed it too.

A neighbor has offered to let him and his family stay in a nearby mobile home for a few weeks, while the family tries to decide what to do next.

Then, like so many who live in this part of Oklahoma, his thoughts turned to the welfare of his animals. Many of the horses injured in the storm have been getting tetanus shots, antibiotics, or both.

“I’ve got to go give that mare a shot,” Cohen said.