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Updated: 6:32 PM May 13, 2009
Many Lone Grove residents displaced by tornado now back home
LONE GROVE, OK -- The break in the rain is a welcome change for Texoma, especially in Lone Grove, where city leaders say the cleanup following the deadly February tornado is nearly complete. Shelby Levins has more.
Posted: 5:31 PM May 13, 2009Reporter: Shelby Levins Email Address: shelby.levins@kxii.com |
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LONE GROVE, OK -- The break in the rain is a welcome change for Texoma, especially in Lone Grove, where city leaders say the cleanup following the deadly February tornado is nearly complete. Shelby Levins has more.
An EF-4 tornado ripped through the city of Lone Grove just over three months ago. Now the city has cleared away almost all the debris, and families are starting to come home.
Rosa Gibson is now moved back into what used to be the Bar K Trailer Park.
“It's beginning to feel like home. When you start doing things to clean up and plant flowers, the flowers were the first thing to come in,” Gibson says.
Gibson has lived in the community for 10 years and is happy to be back home after watching the cleanup process first hand.
“We were in a motel and came out here every day and watched them clean up and watched them set the trailer and see everything they did,” she says.
Gibson says she is proud of her newly planted roses and is thankful for the hard work the county commissioners put in to clean up the area. She knows it has not been an easy process.
“It was really a struggle at first, and then trying to move back in, you couldn't because they wouldn't let you. It's been hard we've made it, we're going to make it,” Gibson says.
Although the heavy equipment still sits idle waiting for the sun to dry the wet ground, Lone Grove city manager Marianne Elfert says the recovery is well underway.
“We’re very close to 100% done, and if we get a break in the weather for a couple days we will be 100% done,” Elfert says.
Elfert says with the help of Carter County Commissioners and funds from the state and federal government, more than 300,000 tons of debris have been hauled off. Gibson says she's just glad to be back home.
“When I drive in, I look at it and say - that's my place, that's where I live. It's good, it's all good.”
The city of Lone Grove tells us the price tag on the city's cleanup will top more than $500,000. Most of that will be paid for through state and federal reimbursements. The city says it is saving more than $100,000 by contracting Carter County to do the work.
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