Installing Storm Shelters At Oklahoma Mobile Home Parks Coming Into Focus

Only a handful of Green Country's mobile home parks take the extra step to provide storm shelters; but last week's fatality in Sand Springs is putting new focus on keeping mobile home residents safe.

Pictures of mobile home parks ripped apart after a tornado come in almost every storm season. It's a scary sight for mobile home residents like Pam Brickey to see.

"Living in a mobile home is a scary thing when there's a storm," she said.

The most recent storm that destroyed a mobile home park happened in Sand Springs and Brickey's been watching the destruction, loss of life and cleanup play out on the news.

"Two seconds and everything is gone. Your entire life is gone," she said.

The mobile home park in Sand Springs didn't have a storm shelter, but Brickey's park in Bixby does.

"Once you see it, I mean, it just brings it home so much more, and them having shelters, I mean, if they would have had shelters there, you know, things could have been a lot better," she said.

There are three storm shelters at the Riverbend Mobile Home Park in Bixby.

The owner of the park also has parks in Claremore, Sand Springs, Sapulpa and Tulsa and all of those are now getting storm shelters.

Angela Martin manages the park in Bixby and promises every resident a spot in the shelters; she's now having two more shelters installed because of it.

She said shelters are expensive, but worth it in the long run, saying you can't put a price on a life.

Even if a tornado roars into Bixby, her residents should be safely underground.

Shelters are expensive; a Broken Arrow mobile home park spent a quarter-million dollars on two tornado shelters.

Mobile home parks Valley Brook in Sapulpa, Deerfield Springs in Claremore, Shannon Valley in Sand Springs and Carriage and Cavalier are all set to have storm shelters installed.