George Riley was sitting down eating dinner Friday night inside an office at Jack’s Memory Chapel near the corner of 36th Street North and Peoria.
The funeral director had been keeping an eye on the news as televised weather reports and the piercing sound of warning sirens signaled that a tornado was in the area.
He felt the building start to shake. “I didn’t know it was directly over us,” Riley told The Eagle Saturday. “Hail was hitting the windows and the wind was roaring,” he said. Then the lights went out.
North Tulsa was hit hard by a band of severe storms that began Friday evening. Preliminary data from the National Weather Service indicated multiple tornado tracks, the Tulsa World reported. The day after, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt declared a state of emergency for eight counties including Tulsa, Okmulgee and Rogers.
Much of the damage happened near Jack’s. Tulsa Tech’s Peoria campus suffered major damage as parts of its roof were blown off and downed power lines and debris littered the northern part of the city.
There was also a gas leak Friday night that shut down roads in the area. City officials said it was later mitigated with assistance from Oklahoma Natural Gas.
At a joint press conference Saturday afternoon, Mayor Monroe Nichols and Sen. Regina Goodwin shared with reporters their gratitude that the storm was not worse. No injuries have been reported in Tulsa but fatalities were reported in other parts of the state, including in the town of Beggs.
Riley said Saturday was the first clear picture of just how bad the devastation was. Inside the building water pooled on the floor and yellow insulation padding hung from the caved in ceiling. Both garage doors were blown out and windows were cracked.
“We’d just remodeled this building in 2019. Now we’re back having to do it again seven years later,” he told The Eagle.
Goodwin said that’s what makes this weather event so tough.
“These are not just buildings but these are families, these are friends, these are folks who help keep this community moving,” she said.
As friends and employees cleaned up debris outside the funeral home Saturday morning, Riley said the damage won’t slow down his business. He said now, he’s waiting to hear from an insurance adjuster to see just how much the rebuild will cost him.
