Shawnee still in early stages of rebuild 1 year after devastating tornado
SHAWNEE, Okla. (KFOR) — Friday, April 19th marks one year since a supercell storm system roared across Oklahoma, spawning at least eight tornadoes.
Shawnee was hit by a devastating EF-2 tornado. Oklahoma Baptist University was in the direct path; one of nearly 2,000 buildings in the city that took damage.
We went out to Shawnee to see how the city is rebuilding 12 months later.
More than 1,800 structures were damaged, totaling nearly 30 million dollars to rebuild everything. City leaders say this will take time, and there is still a long way to go.
"It takes time," Andrea Weckmueller-Behringer, City Manager of Shawnee said. "It takes a lot of time."
The damage happened in a matter of minutes, but the rebuild will take years.
"All in all, we had about 75 damaged locations," Weckmueller-Behringer said.
Areas like the airport and OBU, still show the aftermath of the tornado.
"It's still crazy walking around campus and seeing the spots where these trees used to be," Max Peterson, student at OBU said. "Same thing with the roof of Shawnee Hall. Seeing that just being ripped away was really weird."
Students are reminded of that terrifying night everyday, seeing pieces of campus still being picked up.
"We we're just in complete silence, other than the prayers," Dallas Drakulich, student at OBU said. "We didn't know what we were going to walk back out to."
Days after the tornado, the City of Shawnee began working with The Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management, Homeland Security and FEMA for damage assessment. They also hired a recovery consultant.
"$15-$20 million worth of damage, $6 million spent on debris removal," Weckmueller-Behringer said. "That was not only in terms of return on investment, the best idea, but also in terms of speeding up that process."
However, Andrea wants to emphasize to its residents that this will be a multi-year recovery effort because of the process they have to take in getting the funds from FEMA.
"It's going to take us many more years," Weckmueller-Behringer said. "Just to give you some information for comparison, when in 2013, the tornado struck the Shawnee, Twin Peaks area, literally just last year, in 2023, we received our last reimbursement from FEMA's. So, it is a very drawn out process."
Andrea adds that the city consulted with FEMA and the recovery consultant about the steps they need to take to rebuild.
They have broken the recovery spots in the city into 27 projects and hope to knock them out as quickly as they can.