The April 12, 1945 Tornado Outbreak

The violent tornado first touched down southwest of Antlers near the Hall community. A short time later, it tore through Antlers, becoming one of the most devastating tornadoes in Oklahoma history. Tracking from the southwest part of the city to the northeast, the twister cut a swath of destruction nearly a half-mile wide and destroyed most everything in its path. Roughly one-third of the town lay in ruins, as 375 homes and 250 buildings were destroyed, while around 200 more homes and buildings were heavily damaged. The destruction left about 1500 people homeless. The time of the storm was determined to be at 5:40 p.m., as electric clocks stopped at that hour. 

"The Oklahoma Highway Patrol opened an emergency operations center in the gym of the Antlers High School. Power was knocked out to the water system, leaving the entire town without water. Only one telephone in the city remained functioning. The Antlers Funeral Home, which lost two of its three employees in the storm, was overwhelmed. The dead were taken to funeral homes in Atoka, Hugo, Durant, Idabel, Talihina and Paris, Texas.”

Army posts and Red Cross chapters sent all available personnel into the area. Will Rogers Army Air Field at Oklahoma City sent a badly needed portable electric power plant. 

After leaving Antlers, the tornado continued northeast until it struck the One Creek area in Pushmataha County, then on to the Nashoba area. Additional damage was reported at the community of Red Bank in LeFlore County, with another two injuries. Some accounts say the tornado continued on northeast to Wister and on in to Arkansas, but no historical evidence could be found of this occurring. The F5 rating is based on photographs and witness accounts, but is largely inconclusive.

In any case, this tragedy remains the second deadliest tornado to ever strike within the NWS Tulsa warning and forecast area, and the fourth deadliest in Oklahoma. The official death toll of 69 listed here has been disputed by some and alleged to be higher. It is possible that some victims were not counted, but also possible that some victims in the initial aftermath were counted more than once.

The first tornado of the afternoon in eastern Oklahoma struck Latimer County, moving from southeast of Wilburton to northeast of Red Oak. The hardest hit area was the community of “Boggy”, 5 miles north of Red Oak, which consisted of a dozen or so houses, an elementary school, a teacherage, a cemetery and a church. By all accounts, the entire community was basically destroyed. Three children were killed as a small home was swept away. 15 others were injured.

According to those who survived the tornado, if the school principal hadn’t made the decision to let school out early due to the impending stormy weather, there would likely have been many more deaths as the brick building was flattened to the foundation.

Below are excerpts from an account of the tornado by Rilla Askew, who had several family members survive the "Boggy" tornado.

My mother was seventeen then, on her way home on the school bus, which was not in fact a bus but an old touring car outfitted to hold the country kids who traveled into Red Oak to the high school because the Boggy school only went to eighth grade. When they passed through Boggy going home, my mother says, the sky looked like it was getting ready to storm: massive dark clouds swirling, that ominous green tint to the air, the strange electric smell. The bus driver had his lights on. It was a little after four o’clock...

...Mr. Allen did turn out school, and the children scattered, running toward their homes through the rain and hail and wind. My mother’s sister, Daphne Sides, called Sissy by the family, ran next door to the teacherage her brother Granvil rented. She was fourteen, a slender, brown-eyed girl, the youngest sister in a family of mostly male siblings.

As Sissy ran toward Granvil’s front porch, an awful stillness settled, the breath seemingly sucked out of her lungs; there was a strange, eerie silence. Then she heard the great freight train roar. Just as she reached for the door handle, the house exploded around her, and Sissy was wrenched backwards, tumbling toward the three-foot-high rock wall surrounding the yard. Her red coat was suctioned straight off her back. She felt herself being lifted up, up, the funnel pulling her skyward, until, at the last second, she grabbed hold of the single strand of barbed wire anchored along the top of the wall to keep livestock out.

She held on, the steel barbs cutting her palms, the wind whipping her over the fence one way, back over the fence the other direction, back and forth, back and forth, the funnel roaring, her skin stinging, the splinters and pieces of Boggy sailing through the air around her, and Sissy held on. The funnel passed quickly, it was all over in a twinkling, but to my young aunt clinging to that barbed wire, being whipped from one side of the rock wall to the other, it seemed to go on and on.

To read the full account, visit the web page below. This essay also appears in the book entitled; "Most American: Notes from a Wounded Place", published by the University of Oklahoma Press.