Cleaning Up After Another Storm

Many are cleaning up from a weekend double strike of storms.  Storms hit the Tulsa area on Saturday and Sunday morning, bringing down trees and power lines.  The News On 6's Emory Bryan reports it's a reprise of the ice storm damage on a much smaller scale.

Monday brought a lot of clean up for homeowners and the power company.  Charles Bennett was one of many who spent the day picking up limbs.

"A lot of wind.  Those trees were bent over pretty good, I tell you, what's left of the trees," said Charles Bennett.

Professional tree crews were working to lift tree limbs out of back yards and then grind them up in the street.  One big tree fell over in a yard, but missed the house behind it.

The falling limbs and trees snapped the power lines to the Apache Manor Apartments, leaving residents in the dark over night.  Public Service Company called in out of state crews to help restore power.

Downtown at the BOK Center, the wind knocked out a glass panel that Tulsa Vision Builders says was not fully installed.  Several other windows below it were cracked and taped together, while a large sign at the corner was twisted and leaning.

The wind storm was strong enough to topple big trees and cause further damage to trees damaged by the December ice storm.  And as in the ice storm, the middle of Tulsa had a lot of wind damage because it has so many mature trees.

"With the soil being so wet, these trees didn't stand a chance.  Some of them just blew over," said Steve Tremble of Tremble Tree Trimming.

Mr. Bennett figures soon his trees won't have limbs left.

"The ice storm got these two and the wind storm tried to get that one," said Charles Bennett.

Besides the limbs and power lines, plenty of homeowners will have hail damage on roof tops.  That damage will take much longer to gauge and will mainly be on the south and west sides of Tulsa where larger hail was reported.