TULSA, Okla. — In his 2023 annual report, Mayor G.T. Bynum revealed the Father's Day storm caused about $16.6 million in damage in Tulsa.
The historic storm last June devastated Green Country in more ways than one. Power outages, downed power lines, entire trees laying across streets all across the Tulsa metro plagued residents for weeks.
Marc Hatter is one of the hundreds of thousands who saw the damage caused by the summer storm. He was in Broken Arrow the night of the storm, but as he pulled back into his neighborhood the next morning, he said the scene shocked him.
"When I first showed up, I saw two neighbors together, straining to lift a column that holds up the awning on front of her house, and place it on the cement pad of the front porch that she has there," said Hatter. "I immediately stopped my car and got out and the three of us essentially gave support to the structure out in front of her door."
Hatter did not have too much damage other than a fence to repair and some flooding. He remembers trees down all across his street, piling up four feet high.
City crews cleared over 400 downed trees blocking roads across the metro. They also took care of 50,000 hanging limbs and 1,200 leaning trees that could have been a public safety hazard.
The trees in front of Hatter's home lost a few limbs, but he said his neighbors saw many full trees fall and replanted some to make up the loss. Hatter said there are still some trees down in his part of town.
"It was very apparent which way the wind had blown, there were electrical lines down, some things had been slightly pushed over by previous people in order to allow access to the streets," said Hatter. "For the most part, it was a little bit of chaos and a little bit of a post-apocalyptic kind of feel. There were downed lines, there were trees, there were cars that had been smashed in, roof's that had been smashed in."
There were approximately 49,000 collection requests made by residents, with the city removing more than 490,000 cubic yards of debris from the storm across the neighborhoods.
In the fifteen years he's lived in the neighborhood, Hatter said he never saw anything like that storm. Although there was damage, Hatter and his neighbors came together to help in the clean-up effort as much as possible.
"A few of us got together with chainsaws and a little bit of grit, and the next four hours were dedicated to just make it more livable," said Hatter. "We came together and kind of reached out amongst ourselves and amongst surrounding areas."
Of that $16.6 million total, according to the report, the city of Tulsa will only be responsible for about $2.1 million in damages, because of FEMA disaster assistance and the State of Oklahoma Emergency Declaration.
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