Mon May 12, 2008

Family survived, but Picher may not

By John David Sutter

Staff Writer

PICHER — Looking out her parents' laundry room window, Tressie Gilmore saw black dust swirling above a gravel mountain.

The storm didn't look like an act of nature, the 25-year-old said. It looked like the incarnation of evil: winds rushed toward the house, whipping up the toxic dust that for decades has tainted this town's story.

She had no time to think. Tressie grabbed her children — two girls, ages 2 and 5 — under her arms and ran for the closet. There, she huddled with her own mom and dad. All five of them screamed. Tressie hollered out the Lord 's Prayer. Her 5-year-old daughter, Kaitlynn, called out for God to rescue them.

They shouted for their lives to be spared; and they waited.

It seemed like an eternity.

As families in Picher pieced through the wreckage of their homes on Sunday, they talked not just about the tragic night of storms that killed six people here and left Tressie's mom hospitalized with a broken rib and bruised lung. They talked also about their town — Picher — a town that several residents say gasped its last breath just before Saturday's tornado hit.

"It's the finishing blow to a dying town, in my estimation," said John Hutchison, Tressie's stepfather.

A dying town

Picher is the heart of the Tar Creek Superfund Site, an area of far northeast Oklahoma that was identified by the government as a toxic waste site in 1983. Subterranean lead and zinc mining left much of the area undermined. Homes — hundreds of them — are perched on land that's susceptible to collapse. Lead is a neurotoxin that can reduce IQs and cause health problems, and some of the town's children have tested high for lead over the years.

Many families, like Tressie's, live at the base of 150-foot mountains of mine waste. The gravel, or chat, is laced with toxic metals.

The last of the mines closed in 1970. Since then, the government has spent at least $150 million trying to clean up the pollution. Another $167 million is planned.

All the work has resulted in a highly publicized buyout of all of the residents of Picher and neighboring towns. Over recent years, more than 200 residents have taken checks from the government and moved their lives away from Picher. Slowly the townspeople have been leaving.

And in a slow, protracted way, the town has been dying.

Through it all, a scrappy group of Picherites have held their heads high, saying that they won't leave. That their town will never die.

They voted to keep their school open last year, even though only 90 kids enrolled over 13 grades.

And, through the threats of pollution and buyout, some have maintained they never will move from the only town they call home. The pride in their once-booming mining town stood strong.

At least among the victims, those sentiments had passed on Sunday.

"The death knell for Picher already sounded some time ago," said Stacy Snow, Tressie's 41-year-old brother. "This is the final nail in the coffin."

Snow said he owns his parents' house, which was destroyed with his five family members in it on Saturday. It is uninsured. He was scheduled to get buyout money, like many of his neighbors. But appraisers never measured the home's value. He worries he won't get anything.

"From a financial standpoint, it's ruin," he said.

U.S. Sen. James Inhofe, a Tulsa Republican who has been a recent champion of the buyout plan, said all Picher residents eligible for the buyout will get their money, regardless of whether or not the property had been appraised.

If nothing else, federal funding from a disaster declaration will help Picher move on, he said.

Those reassurances brought no comfort to Snow.

Surviving the storm

After only a minute of screaming huddled prayers from a bedroom closet, a house slid on top of Snow's five family members. Tressie and her daughters were pushed about 30 feet by the collapsing home. They ended up in what would have been the home's front yard.

The house slammed up against a white car. A wall jolted towards a tree — and stopped.

The family was trapped in a space hardly large enough for a single person. But the door to the closet stopped the weight of the home from crushing them. One by one, they got out.

First came the parents, grandma and grandpa to Tressie's young children. Next came the kids. Tressie shoved them through a crack and out into safety.

Tressie remained trapped. Her ankle was stuck. A natural gas line by her face had broken, and the fumes made her woozy and frantic, she said. Emergency responders trailed in a line of oxygen to her. Then they used a car jack to pry the house off Tressie's stomach.

After about 20 minutes, she was free.

No one was harmed except for Tressie's mom, who remained in a Miami hospital on Sunday. The family feels blessed just to have their lives.

Tressie called it a miracle. Her daughter's prayers saved the family, she said.

Just several lots down the street, Angela Brandon, 42, helped a friend sort through the ruin of her family's home. Pushing past scratched photos and tattered sweaters, Brandon said that her nephew — a 20-year-old — is among those residents who was still missing.

Her nephew tried to outrun the storm in a car, she said.

One of the friends came back to consciousness this morning — laying in a field and missing several teeth, Brandon said.

She hopes her nephew will be found alive.

But even if he has died, she said, she wants to know that, too.