As storms with wind reaching nearly 100 mph moved across the state on Saturday evening, many Perkins’ residents woke up to broken trees, missing trampolines and damaged fences.
Jonette Hatfield lives in the Perkins County Estates, and she said her yard looked beautiful when she went to bed. She mowed her lawn on Saturday, and when she woke up the following day, she saw a disaster of tree debris.
Jonette Hatfield creates a pile of damaged branches from her Bald Cypress tree that was damaged on Saturday in Perkins.
Hatfield said she expected to be getting ready for church, but instead, she picked up broken branches from her Bald Cypress tree and created a pile.
Jonette Hatfield and Kashlynn Taff, 12, talk about Taff’s two missing dogs that ran away during Saturday’s storm.
Hatfield wasn’t the only one out in the early morning cleaning up yards. Colton Kimber, 32, was cleaning up branches and discarded car parts strewn across his yard. However, that wasn’t the only damage found in his yard. Walking outside that morning, he found an extra trampoline in his yard. Luckily, he said he had located the owner. Kimber had been outside cleaning up debris for about an hour and still had a lot of work ahead of him.
High winds from Saturday night’s storm took down this tree at the 900 block of Burdick Street in Stillwater
Bob Ernst, the Stillwater Police Chief, and City Manager, said the community had a lot of tree damage, including some that fell onto structures.
“The residents and city workers have been working to get the roads open and brush taken care of,” he said. “We will be picking up brush that is stacked at the curbside in the coming days.”
In Stillwater, the high winds wreaked havoc on the trees. However, near the Recycling Center, before reaching the Stillwater City Limits, the trailer part of a semi was seen partially flipped over into a fence.
The Stillwater and Perkins communities also lost power when the storms rolled through on Saturday. Almost 20,000 lost power in Stillwater. There were still around 1,000 customers without power by Sunday afternoon.
Rob Hill, Director of Stillwater Emergency Management, said the Stillwater Electric Utility crews worked through the night and continue to repair broken distribution and transmission poles.
“Currently, we do not have an estimated timeline for restoration but continue to work throughout today and around the clock to restore power for all Stillwater customers,” he said.
Perkins residents had backyard furniture, doghouses and play items blown across their yards after the windy storm on Saturday.
Officials didn’t report any injuries from the storm in Perkins or Stillwater.