Storm damage in Carter County
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Updated: 11:32 PM Apr 29, 2009
Storm damage in Carter County
ARDMORE, Okla--North of the Red River, more flooding. In fact, some of the heaviest rains fell in southern Oklahoma.
Posted: 11:22 PM Apr 29, 2009
Reporter: Shelby Levins
Email Address: shelby.levins@kxii.com
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ARDMORE, Okla--North of the Red River, more flooding. In fact, some of the heaviest rains fell in southern Oklahoma.

As late afternoon faded to evening, the rains continued pouring down. But OG&E crews are out working to get power back up.

"We had straight line winds and then we had lightening," said Gene Fryar with OG&E. "That was the mixture that caused our problems. We had 2,200 people out at one time, ranging from healdton to the east side of Durant."

At the height of the outages, street lights in Ardmore were knocked offline and many businesses were without electricity. Out in western Carter County, Healdton Elementary was also hit hard by heavy rain and strong winds.

"Itt all happened instantly, before I could even punch the alarm button there was no electricity therefore the alarms or the intercoms didn't work," said Kay Watson, Principal at Healdton Elementary.

The storms knocked out power to the entire school, and shattered at least one window. Classrooms were abandoned mid-lesson for the students' safety.

"It was very scary, we had children, screaming, crying - it was quit a tense moment," said Watson.

Watson said many students were shaken up, but fortunately, no children were hurt.

Shawn Jewell is one of the many thankful mothers that rushed to pick up her son.

"Right off the bat I saw Ms. Watson and she came up to me and told me what a hero Chase was so I knew he was ok and I was able to go down and pick him up," Jewell said.

"A real bad rain storm came to Healdton and there were a lot of people scared but I tried to help a lot of people," first grader Chase Jewell said.

Watson says she's just thankful every student is ok, but she's not the only one.

"We'd rather have a thunderstorm than a fire storm like we had recently. This is typical. we're used to this. These are just things we deal with periodically we're so glad to get the rain we're not complaining."

So while the rains may continue, there's a silver lining to every cloud. OG&E say they hope to have most of the power back up by Thursday.


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