Lone Grove Family Finds Safety In Closet

News On 6

LONE GROVE, OK -- A group of eight people in Lone Grove survived Tuesday's tornado by crowding into a closet.

Lana Hartman, Carole McFarland and six other family members crammed into the closet when they heard the sirens.

They couldn't shut the door, and when the tornado passed over the home, Hartman said her daughter started rising off the ground.

She says everyone reached out and held onto her daughter with everything they had.

"I promise you, when the weather people say there's a storm on the way, me and my children will be underground," Hartman said. "I don't care if its three hours before the tornado hits or if it never hits, we will be underground. I will never ride out a storm like this again."

Their home is destroyed, but no one was hurt.

A Broken Arrow couple witnessed the strength of the storms in Lone Grove from their home. They came home to find a check on their porch belonging to a family in the tornado's strike-zone.

"It's amazing something can travel that far, plus it was dry and it had rained here all night long," Phil Ballard said. "This was about 2 o'clock this afternoon, so it was very odd, to say the least."

The Ballards plan to try to contact the owners of the check.