(Editor's note: In observance of the Memorial Day holiday on Monday, a new top story will not appear until Tuesday.)
By Todd Ceisner
BassFan Editor
Terry Butcher's house will need a new roof. His truck bed will likely have to be replaced. And he'll have to plant a new tree in his front yard.
All things considered, though, the former Elite Series angler considers himself extremely fortunate that the tornado that hit his Talala, Okla., home directly on Monday spared him the devastation others in his home state are dealing with.
"It's been kind of hectic trying to things back together," he said Thursday morning as he worked to repair some fencing that was dislodged by the EF-1 twister that swept over his property Monday afternoon.
"I'm not complaining one bit," he added. "My house is still standing and we didn't lose anything out of it."
Butcher was home alone Monday afternoon when the storm hit – his wife and oldest daughter were at work and his youngest daughter was at a friend's house – and he rode it out in an outdoor, underground storm shelter.
"I was coming back from a livestock sale in Tulsa and I heard there was a tornado in the vicinity of Talala and Ramona," he said. "When they say Talala and Ramona, I'm right in the middle so I wanted to get home and not be on the road somewhere and run into it.
"I hurried home and it was raining really hard and I pulled my truck [he was towing a 32-foot livestock trailer] under a lean-to that's off the side of my shop, thinking it was just going to hail. I sat in the truck for a bit and listened to the radio and they said there was one on the ground by highway 75 heading toward Talala. I kept looking back to the west to see if I could see anything. I got out of the truck and put my rain suit on and went over to the storm shelter. It started to get a lot darker and then it quit raining. That's when I saw the tornado."
His sister, Tuesday Evers, who's married to Elite Series angler Edwin Evers, called him moments later to let him know the twister had just passed behind their property a half-mile away.
"I said, 'I know, it's heading toward my house,'" Butcher said.
He snapped some pictures and more than a minute's worth of video on his phone before he got into his shelter to ride it out.
"The wind really ramped up," he said. "I usually don't feel threatened or scared when I'm in there, but when it got right over the top of me, I thought it was going to rip the door right off of it. I got scared in there. I won't lie about that. It was violent. It ripped the spinner off the vent tube. It was so loud down there. I was trying to hold my ears while not letting go of the door."
When the funnel cloud had passed by, Butcher emerged to find most of his property still intact. The large doors on his pole barn were mangled. His truck and trailer had been sucked out of the lean-to, picked up and spun around before being slammed into the side of his barn. His Bass Cat boat was shoved from one end of the shop to the other but didn't suffer any damage. The chimney on his house toppled off the roof into the yard.
National Weather Service estimates pegged the wind speeds of the twister that hit Butcher's house between 90 to 100 mph (details here).
His house suffered the most extensive damage.
"I'm probably going to need a whole new roof," he said. "It lifted the joists and roof up 2 inches off the rafters and tweaked some walls inside. At first, I didn't think it hurt the house other than a few windows and a couple of walls, but the builder and insurance adjuster were out yesterday and it did quite a bit more damage than meets the eye."
Butcher's house suffered some roof damage and his beloved ash tree was snapped off during the storm.
Among the other damage was the ashe tree he planted in his front yard 18 years ago. It broke off during the storm.
"That was pretty much our only tree," he said. "We've tried to plant trees up here. We just can't get them to grow."
"My oldest started crying when she saw the damage and my youngest was like, 'Oh my gosh,'" he said. "My wife was pretty sad, too. We feel very fortunate that's all it did.
"That EF-1, when I was inside that cellar, it was real violent. I can't imagine what those other folks went through."
(Click here to see Butcher's video of the approaching tornado as shown during a report on a Tulsa TV station.)
Helping Where They Can
Other anglers who call Oklahoma home said Thursday they feel fortunate they weren't in the path of any of this week's storms and they're trying to help others the best they can.
Brad Hallman, who fished the Elite Series from 2006-2011, lives in Norman. His house wasn't affected, but said some of his children's elementary school classmates weren't as fortunate.
"This area is used to storms this time of year," he said. "You have friends and family that you look after and your kids are in school and some of their friends no long have a home to live in. It's something that affects everybody.
"It's a pretty devastating thing, obviously, when they're as big as the one that came through Moore. I've been through it a bunch. I'm just thankful it wasn't my house or family. You just try to help your neighbors as much as you can."
Hallman has spent most of life an Oklahoma resident and despite its location along the so-called Tornado Alley, he can't foresee himself moving elsewhere.
"I've traveled all over the country and there area lot of places that are a lot prettier and maybe have nicer weather, but the people here are great," he said. "I'll never leave. I like it here."
On Wednesday, Hallman fished a weekly jackpot tournament at Lake Thunderbird just outside of Norman. Before the field blasted off, everone agreed there would be no winnings that night. All of the entry fees would be donated to the Red Cross.
"I think some guys even paid double entry fees," said Hallman, who won the event.
Jared Miller, another Norman resident and Elite Series pro, also fished the jackpot event. He's been spending time this week volunteering with his wife, Laura, at various locations. When asked to describe what he's seen over the past 72 hours, he said there's little to compare it to.
"It looks like a bomb went off," he said.
He said his neighborhood was spared any significant damage as the twister than eventually devastated the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore passed 10 miles to the south.
"The day before, we were 10 miles on the other side of the storm that hit Shawnee," he said. "The weather people here are amazing. You'll know if you’re a couple blocks north or south of where it’s going to hit. We could see it from our front porch. We live up on a hill and watched it. The second it went through, we went to the store and started buying water and non-perishable food and took it to our church to help them stock up.
"We've just been doing a lot of volunteering to help people get their things back and find supplies they need and taking them to different churches – just food, water and the essentials. My wife doesn't want to go to work. She just wants to help people."
On Thursday, he and his wife helped out at the Cleveland County Fairgrounds in Norman where animals that have been recovered are being taken for their owners to come claim them.
Kenyon Hill, an Elite Series pro who also calls Norman home, said his main concern when the storm was bearing down was the safety of his brother.
"My brother was in the path of it and I called him to make sure he wasn't home," he said. "It actually quit before it got to his house in Newalla. He was on his way home.
"My heart goes out to the people it hit. It missed me by 8 miles. It hardly rained at my house."
Hill said he tried to travel north on Insterstate 35 from Norman toward Moore, but didn't get far.
"It's just brutal," he said. "You can't help but stop and look. It's horrific. You can't get a feel for it from watching TV. Until you see it in person, it's unbelievable.
"Unfortunately, through experience, Oklahomans have gotten used to this. We pour out what people need, be it sunscreen or work gloves and move on and learn to step away because you're just in the way of the emergency crews."
