PAWNEE, Okla. — The lake is a place Larry Kling and his family go to spend time together and unwind. Each summer, they spend a few months at an RV park near Pawnee Lake.
As Oklahomans, they didn't think much of the storm coming their way. But the weather got ugly quick.
“The first thing that ran through my mind is when the wind picked up and stuff was what happened to the little rain?” Kling said.
The storm took them all by surprise, with no warning and no storm sirens sounding.
He and his wife were inside their trailer when the wind picked up.
“Trailer started rocking real bad, and my wife wanted to get out," said Kling. "I grabbed her and told her to stay in, and about that time is when our camper spun around.”
The only thing that kept their camper upright, and away from the water, was a tree.
"You can't describe it, you can't," said Kline. "I mean it's just like you're just being put in something and ran through it
His step-father was in a camper next to them, closer to the water. That camper, also stopped from rolling after it slammed into a different tree.
"My wife noticed that the camper was moving, and I knew it was moving but I couldn't tell which way it was moving... If it was going sideways, if it was going over, any of that, until we hit the tree, and then I knew we were still upright."
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The pair were thrown around as their trailer swung off it's jack stand and into the nearby tree.
But Kling being a volunteer firefighter with the Morrison Fire Department knew he couldn't just stay put.
“My main concern was if my wife was okay, and then when I was for sure that she was okay, then we both took off just trying to help anybody that we could find and see.”
The trailer closest to them was the one Kling and his wife checked on first.
It had been forced over onto it's side by the wind.
The girls inside said they were okay so they moved on to help other neighbors.
Around this point is when Sheriff Darrin Varnell said close to 200 first responders from surrounding counties pulled into the RV park.
Kling is grateful they're all walking away from the storm okay, because he knows not everyone else is so lucky.
While they suffered some damage, the storm has nothing on his family's spirit.
“We’ll go back home, we’ll fix everything and be ready to do it again next year and hope for the better," said Kling. "I mean you just can’t quit, it’s Oklahoma you’ve got to deal with it and that’s what we do.”
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