Skiatook Residents Clean Up As Flood Waters Recede

As the sun shines down and the water recedes, people in Skiatook are slowly getting back to normal.

Highway 20 is open to traffic and “The Freeze” is serving ice cream again. Owner Lisa Little says historic flood waters crept into their restaurant and covered it in at least two feet of water.

For five days, they were completely shut down.

“It's pretty devastating this time of year,” she said.

With the help of volunteers, they were able to deep clean the restaurant and throw away spoiled food.

“We brought in a trailer and loaded all our equipment that would travel and took it off to our house,” she said. “Everything that wouldn’t travel we put up on milk crates.”

Saturday, once the waters finally stayed down, they re-opened. Their sign out front, proudly letting people know.

But the clean up is not going so fast for people who live in nearby neighborhoods.

“All the fence is gone, the pool is gone, all the patio furniture was gone,” said Kim Harper, who lives in Skiatook.

Harper is getting some help from friends and family but says the clean up is going to take a long time.

Six feet of deep flood waters covered her yard, destroying a furniture business she ran from her home.

“We’ve done four loads to the dump and most of it is furniture that got ruined,” Harper said.

Harper now is planning to move, once everything is cleaned up.

“I don’t think it's going to happen again, but why take the chance,” she said.