Mobile Home Residents Survive Storm Using Laundry Room for Refuge

By Gan Matthews, NEWS 9

SLAUGHTERVILLE, Oklahoma -- When a tornado hit the Prairie Creek Village mobile home park in Slaughterville Monday, all the residents survived the twister that destroyed their homes.

Some residents survived by taking refuge in the park's laundry room, a cinder block structure on the park's east side. The laundry room may not have been designed to be a shelter, but it turned out to be a good one.

Resident Patricia Reed said her family, along with several other people rode out the storm inside, and without that structure, they may not have survived.

"I think we'd all be dead. I think it would have killed all of us," Reed said.

An Ardmore state representative had presented a bill that would require mobile home operators to have a safety plan, but it would not require them to build safe rooms. The bill passed the House, but failed in the Senate.

"I wrote this legislation because of a Lone Grove tornado that resulted in the deaths of several individuals who lived in mobile homes. These homes are particularly vulnerable and my legislation could save lives in the future at no cost to the state," said State Rep. Pat Ownbey.

Ownbey said that while representatives of the manufactured homes industry have worked with him on the legislation, they lobbied against it when it arrived in the Oklahoma Senate.

"I am very disappointed in their opposition to this legislation," Ownbey said. "Almost every mobile home park owner I have talked to was supportive of this bill. It is compromise legislation that is easy to implement and that could save lives. If I had filed legislation requiring that a shelter be provided, then I would understand opposition to the bill. The concern of those involved in manufactured homes seems petty compared to the lives it could save."