By Robert Medley
Managing Editor
Piedmont’s Fire Chief Andy Logan was off-duty on Tuesday, May 24, 2011, a day that would bring one of the worst natural disaster he had ever seen to his own home.
He picked up his children from school and headed home that afternoon. He knew storms were possible, as weather forecasts warned. And about an hour after picking up the kids, an F-4 tornado was barreling across open fields on a beeline for Piedmont.
“In 2011, the fire department was still pretty small and short-staffed. I was not on-duty that day, I wasn’t at the station,” Logan recalls.
Logan made it from the school to his home at the corner of N.W. 220 and Mustang Road.
“I was at my house with my kids, watching the weather,” Logan said.
An F-5 tornado then killed three people in Canadian County along Interstate 40, and it headed northeast. Ten people would lose their lives from the terrible skies.
Logan said neighbors came over, and everyone went to the outside tornado shelter.
“It wasn’t too long after that the storm was right on us, and pretty much took our area out. We were pretty much in the path of it,” Logan said.
Logan is a Piedmont native who built his house in 2003. His children, Jake, then 7, and Callie, then 4, were with him. His wife Allison was at work, and his mom Joyce Logan joined them in the shelter.
Logan said he popped his head out of the shelter and saw the tornado coming.
“Looking to the southwest, all you could see was the tornado. It was huge, just huge. It was plainly visible. It was like looking through a camera and it is the only thing you can see in the viewfinder. It was like, ‘My heavens.’ It was dark and clearly on the ground.”
As the tornado hit, the vents of the shelter started flapping and debris came in. But Logan said he remained confident they would survive. He remembers his mother saying “The Lord’s Prayer.” He said a neighbor took a video of the tornado as it approached that can still be seen on Youtube.
In the shelter, Logan had a battery-powered TV, flashlight and his firefighter’s two-way, hand-held radio. But all he heard was the tornado hitting.
“I would say it sounded like a cross between a jet engine and a machine gun,” Chief Logan said.
He held on to the door handle from inside the shelter as the winds hit. Joyce Logan kept saying the Lord’s Prayer.
“I remember saying, ‘You better pray louder,” Chief Logan said.
Once the tornado passed from Logan’s property he got out and saw the barn was gone, and only a slab remained. Rubble was piled up where the house had been.
There were 88 houses destroyed in Piedmont from the tornado.
“There were vehicles in our pasture that were not ours,” Logan said.
He said he saw destruction in all directions.
“I knew we were in a jam,” Logan said.
The tornado veered away from downtown Piedmont, but not from Falcon Lake, an addition in the Piedmont city limits.
The tornado headed to Falcon Lake, in the northeast corner of Piedmont, where two young boys were killed, Ryan, 3, and Cole, who was just 15 months-old. Their mother and sister survived.
Logan would rebuilt his home eventually. He still has photos of the damage at his home on his cellphone.
“It was one of those situations where you train for such a disaster but then it is on you. I had to make sure my family was OK. I made sure there was no one in the vehicles in the pasture and made sure all the neighbors were OK. And then our guys did all the work, our Assistant Fire Chief Roy Cassada and Deputy Fire Chief Tim Heinrich, they ran the event,” Chief Logan said.
Kingfisher Fire Chief Randy Poindexter showed up and helped Piedmont firefighters as other firefighters from the area responded.
He said his daughter is still leery of stormy weather.
“It is part of living here. When we peeked out of that shelter and everything we owned was gone, it was a shock, and even hours later. But it was just stuff. When we found out what happened just 2 miles from our home, (The Hamils’ home in Falcon Lake) that kind of put things in perspective. My family was safe. People say it was a tragedy. What happened at Falcon Lake was a tragedy. What happened to our house was an inconvenience.”
Chief Logan said people in the community worked together to help neighbors and people in Piedmont recover.
“The sense of community after that tornado was amazing. The amount of people willing to help. There were no sides. We were a community. Nobody cared about your political affiliation or what you did for a living. They just cared about you and your family and how to help. It was heart-warming. We never had to ask for a meal. Immediately, the Red Cross was here and the First Baptist Church, and all the local churches, it didn’t matter if you went to church there or not they were willing to help. We were very, very blessed,” Chief Logan said.
He lost his family memorabilia, such as pictures and other sentimental belongs. His 12 cows were killed.
Logan said people should be weather-aware this time of year and have a plan for tornadoes.
He said people who have storm shelters in their home that could be buried in debris by a tornado should register the shelter with the City of Piedmont Police Department in case a home is covered in rubble after a tornado hits it. People can call the police department or register online, Chief Logan said.
“It was a mere inconvenience for us compared to what the Hamils lost. That was tragic, and life-changing,” Chief Logan said.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Hank and Catherine Hamil lost sons Ryan, 3, and Cole, 1 at Falcon Lake in the May 24, 2011 tornado. Read their story Thursday in The Piedmont-Surrey Gazette and on piedmontnewsonline.com.
