Gross! Oklahoma Municipal Public Tornado Shelter Was A Dangerous Cesspool.

Residents of Sulfur, Oklahoma in a
municipal storm shelter in foul water
and broken chairs as a tornado
roared through the city. Incident
shows public storm shelters should
be maintained, inspected to ensure
public safety in storm emergencies. 

 One of the worst hit towns in last weekend's tornado outbreak was Sulfur, Oklahoma, where the downtown was largely destroyed, as were numerous homes. 

Not everybody has a storm shelter at their house, so many - but not all - towns and cities in Tornado Alley have public storm shelters where anybody can go to seek protection from dangerous tornadoes. 

However, Sulfur was a case study in what happens when a city doesn't maintain a storm shelter. 

People who arrived at Sulfur's storm shelter had to go down a steep flight of stairs (normal) only to find three inches of foul water on the floor and unsafe, broken chairs.  

Because repeated waves of tornado-warned storms passed over or near Sulfur Saturday night, people who sought shelter in this awful place had to stay there for three hours. For the elderly and disabled, standing for so long is an impossible order. 

One group of people - including one in a wheelchair - arrived at the storm shelter only to realize they couldn't get down there as the tornado bore down. At the last second, the group was able to get into a hotel just as the tornado began ripping downtown Sulfur apart. 

Laura Carter, a private caregiver, was in that group, told 2 News Oklahoma: "There's three inches of water that they are standing in for hours....Most of the people that are down there are in sandals or barefoot, and the chairs that are down there are rusted and falling through. They're falling through, they don't even have a place to sit for hours, as a tornado is ripping through our town."

Carter continued: "I ran into a city worker the other day who was actually down there helping us, and I asked, I was like, 'has the shelter always been flooded like this?' He said, 'Yes ma'am, our boss told us last year to go down there and pump all the water out and just leave the rusted chairs down there. I highly doubt we'll ever have to use them.'"

Famous last words, indeed. 

For any weather emergency, if there's a low cost way to protect the public, there should be one, even if the chances of actually having to use it in any given year are low. In Oklahoma's case, not everybody has access or can afford their own tornado shelter, so these municipal ones can save lives.

The television station says towns surrounding Sulfur have workable municipal storm shelters. 

As for Sulfur, the city has since condemned the terrible storm shelter as unsafe. Local residents and activists plan to lobby for a new, better one for the next time. 

I just hate to think what would have happened to someone who, grossed out by this storm shelter, left to seek another one, but ended up getting run over by the tornado in the process. 

 I hope Sulfur never gets hit by another tornado like this. But I also hope they build a safe, clean public storm shelter,  just in case.