Prayers need for the town of Picher, OK

[SOONER STEAKER]

Picher OK. was devastated by a Tornado this evening that wiped out 20 blocks of homes. 6 confirmed dead and countless injured. Also remember those in Neosho, MO who also lost their lives from the same Tornado.

[StoopTroup]

Oh man...

Awful.

Prayers sent.

[Blue]

Done. Those smilies in yer sig really threw me off.

[achiro]

Both my parents grew up in Picher and graduated from Picher high school. We still have family and friends there and haven't been able to get ahold of anyone. PLease keep them in your prayers.

[boomersooner28]

Like that poor town needed any more destruction after the contamination. Poor folks.

[Curly Bill]

Wow, hate to hear that. I'm in.

[Tailwind]

How horrible! Prayers indeed.

[OKC-SLC]

Both my parents grew up in Picher and graduated from Picher high school. We still have family and friends there and haven't been able to get ahold of anyone. PLease keep them in your prayers.

keep us posted on this, achiro.

prayers, indeed.

[SOONER STEAKER]

TV stations in OKC are saying it was an EF4 tornado. EF4 carries winds in excess of 150+.

There are now 7 confimed deaths in Picher.

The pics from Tulsa TV stations are showing incredible damage.

[KC//CRIMSON]

I just read this about an hour before you posted this thread.

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/24555711/

good grief.

[Flagstaffsooner]

Like that poor town needed any more destruction after the contamination. Poor folks.No shat. Prayers from the Mountain.:(

[soonerboomer93]

I hope your family is ok Achiro

[King Crimson]

just terrible.

[OU-HSV]

Awful news.
Now they have 9 confirmed fatalities in Picher. Looks really bad.

[Okla-homey]

here's a recap. Includes coverage of the tornados around McAlester.

http://www.kjrh.com/mediacenter/[email protected]&navCatId=3

[goingoneight]

We're watching it on MSNBC here in Florida, it looks nasty...

[OU-HSV]

We're watching it on MSNBC here in Florida, it looks nasty...

Yep, I just flipped to MSNBC and right now it looks like Georgia is the latest victim of these tornadic storms.

[r5TPsooner]

Prayers indeed. How big a town was it. The wife and I never heard of it before.

[BigRedJed]

Picher is a tiny town very close to Commerce, in the NE part of the state. Used to be a boomtown thanks to the lead mines in town, especially during WWII. Lack of controls on lead mining led to giant cavities under the town, which are causing collapses and sinkholes. Also, the abandoned mines filled up with water, which became contaminated from the lead. To make matters worse, the companies left giant "chat" piles all over town, mountains of contaminated soil that blow in the wind, and that children play on, causing lead poisoning to be a huge problem.

The EPA has named it one of the top Superfund sites in the nation (it might be #1, I don't recall). Much of the controversy these days in Picher has been related to those who want to be bought out and start new lives elsewhere vs. those who want the government to come in and clean up the town they have called home their entire lives and in which they have lots of community pride. Property values have basically become worthless -- imagine putting your entire existence into building a life and a home, only to have it become worthless and impossible to sell.

Some people who live there see themselves as completely trapped, and just want to get out. Some have an unbelievable attachment to their little town, which was once a great, thriving boomtown. It's easy to feel for both sides.

Okie filmmakers Brad Beesley, Julianna Brannum and James Payne (http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/creekrunsred/filmmakers.html) made an amazing, beautiful, touching film about it about two years ago, called The Creek Runs Red (http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/creekrunsred/). Brad Beesley, BTW, did the wonderful Okie Noodling documentary, plus the incredible Flaming Lips biopic Fearless Freaks. Bands like the Lips and Starlight Mints contributed to the soundtrack of The Creek Runs Red. If you want to find out more about Picher, and about the people of Oklahoma, watch that movie. You can see a preivew on that main PBS page, but surf around and look at the other pages. You can also check out the film's website here (http://www.thecreekrunsred.com/).

Thoughts and prayers for the people of Picher.

[SOONER STEAKER]

The town is small. The Mantle families live in Picher.

[BigRedJed]

here's a recap. Includes coverage of the tornados around McAlester.

http://www.kjrh.com/mediacenter/[email protected]&navCatId=3
The hills in the background of that "raw video of tornado damage in Picher" link are not really hills. They are giant mounds of toxic mining waste.

For better or worse, the tornado will be the end of that town.

From the website of the film I mentioned (from 2007):

Q: Please provide an update on the status of Picher and what the people in the film have been doing since filming ended.

A; In June 2006, after studies found most churches, homes and the school were in serious danger of caving in, a federal buyout was offered to any Picher residents who wanted to leave. A majority of the residents accepted the offer and have left or are in the process of leaving. After a February 2007 local election, it was decided that the school would stay open for another year, although enrollment is down. The senior class enrollment is at 8 students, down from 26 last year. And some of those students will be leaving during this school year. Many people are taking the buyout not because they are anxious to get out, but because they realize this will be the fairest price they will ever be able to get.

Of the characters in the film Hoppy Ray is most likely to stay, although, it's anticipated city utilities will no longer be available within a couple years' time. Bill Lake and his family chose to move after a long fight to stay, however, will still live very near the Superfund site. Betty Cole and her family have all moved or are in the process of moving.

Additionally, the Quapaw Tribe and other local advocacy groups are still actively working with the federal and state governments remediate their lands. This is where the real tragedy lies - a tribe that has already been once removed from its ancestral homelands is left with an immense amount of waste on the land they were relocated to. Much of the efforts to date we're aimed at mitigating the threat to human health, especially the children. Now after the relocation of the Picher/Cardin communities, the Quapaw Tribe, the state and the nation will be left to address a monumental waste site that has been continually expanding through the motion of the wind, rivers and aquifers.

[BigRedJed]

I just read this about an hour before you posted this thread.

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/24555711/

good grief.
I thought this was a link to tornado stories, and only just now clicked on it. That story covers everything I was saying and then some. A really compelling read. Strange coincidence that it was published on MSNBC yesterday, before the tornado.

Pollution busts Okla. mining town
Residents say farewell to lead-laced hills, Superfund site; 'we cry every day'
The Associated Press
updated 2:27 p.m. CT, Sat., May. 10, 2008

PICHER, Okla. - They could pass for mourners at a funeral.

They line up along the main drag in front of empty cafes and shops and rusted mining equipment fenced off with barbed wire. Passing time, some from this blue-jean crowd press hands and foreheads against windows of stores. Businesses that died so many years ago it's hard to remember what they sold.

Two fellows with graybeards stand near a telephone pole. They watch for any sign of action in front of Susie's Thrift and Gift.

"I hate this," the older one laments. "I hate to see Picher go."

"Yeah," the other mumbles, looking down at his shoelaces.

"All those memories."

"Been mined out pretty bad, though."

A town's last stand
When the lead and zinc mines all around here closed down, many folks told themselves and promised their kids that Picher could go on and even be the same. There would always be church, high school football and the Dairy Queen.

But that was nearly 40 years ago, and all the praying and wishful thinking can't undo what's happened here.

People are leaving, escaping the reality of life in one of the worst environmental nightmares in the country. A voluntary federal buyout is hastening the exodus.

This is a town's last stand.

"Ol' Picher is just like the rest of us, she's 90 years old and on her last legs," says Orval "Hoppy" Ray, who worked the mines in the 1940s and runs a drafty pool hall in town.

Ray reveals the stubbornness that comes with 82 years of living: He and dozens of other holdouts will not leave, even when there is no city water or police department. No matter how much he's offered for his property, his place will remain open until he's dead.

"I don't think the lights will ever go out," Ray says, but there's something in his voice that leaves room for doubt.

His birthplace is the center of the Tar Creek Superfund site, a 40-square-mile area that also takes in portions of Missouri and Kansas.

Honeycombed with mines
For decades, before Picher became a town, miners carved miles of tunnels under its land, and the bounty of lead ore they recovered made bullets for both world wars. Neighboring communities were also undercut.

During its boom, Picher's population peaked at 20,000. Saloons and movie parlors lined the streets.

It was a rough-and-tumble way of life: fistfights just for the heck of it, plenty of bravado and wasted paychecks and the understanding that if you were old enough to work a shift in a mine, you were old enough to down a shot of whiskey.

Picher's mines closed around 1970; the wounds they inflicted on the people and land never healed.

Acid waters, land of sinkholes
Today, Tar Creek runs orange with acidic water that flooded the mines. Cave-ins and sinkholes threaten; a mine collapse in 1967 took nine homes.

Bleak, gray mountains of lead-contaminated chat, or mine tailings, loom around town. Some rise 100 feet and look like sand dunes. They have names like Sooner, St. Joe and Golden Rod 8.

For years, before most knew better, the gravel-coated piles doubled as sledding hills for kids, a Lover's Lane for teenagers and a makeshift proving grounds for dirt bikes and the high school's track team.

It will take at least 15 more years to haul the stuff off, for use in highway construction projects, but that's not soon enough.

The polluted dust that blows through every nook of this place has already affected a generation.

In the 1990s, a study found elevated blood lead levels in Tar Creek-area children, and teachers began noticing years ago that students were learning more slowly and couldn't focus.

"Don't Put Lead in Your Head," says a sign still hanging next to City Hall, showing a drawing of a smiling child.

Adults suffered, too. Natives like John Sparkman began having high blood pressure in their 20s. He lost his sister to Lou Gehrig's disease when she was 41, and would lay odds pollution caused it.

"I would've liked to have seen the town located somewhere else, but no one wanted to see it happen," says Sparkman, who works for the town housing authority. "It should've ended in the 1960s."


The federal government has stepped in with a plan to relocate residents, a buyout program that could cost $60 million.

As of April, nearly 800 applications had been turned in by home and business owners, according to the Lead-Impacted Communities Relocation Assistance Trust.

More than 300 offers have been made so far and of those, 272 accepted. Only a handful of offers were rejected.

The payouts won't make anyone rich — a 1,200 square-foot home fetches around $60,000 — but most residents believe this is the only ticket out of the depressed area.

The town has been whittled down to 800 people. Most businesses are long gone. The truck stop on the edge of town closed when unleaded was going for $2.79 a gallon. The school system is down to 99 kids and already axed extracurricular activities like band, art and sports.

But there are the holdouts, perhaps as many as 30 families, who plan to stay put.

"They thought they were going to live here for the rest of their lives," says Larry Roberts, a former state lawmaker and operations manager of the relocation trust.

Why remain at a Superfund site?
Candie Crites tries to explain, even as the ground under her feet rumbles almost every day. A mine shaft lies just on the south side of her driveway, 15 feet from her shotgun house in Cardin, a spit away from Picher. When the tremors come, it sounds like a dynamite blast and shakes windows.

But she can't leave the land she's lived on for decades, where the forsythias her parents planted bloom and the best memories with her late husband were made.

"It hurts to see what's going on, it's literally like tearing away pages of your life or layers of your skin," Crites says, sobbing.

Hoppy Ray's son, Steven, is also staying. Stubborn like his old man, the 61-year-old rattles off reasons why he thinks this place can be something again.

What about the city water being turned off? "It will turn into a rural water system."

Or living in a deserted city? "No more lonely than if you lived out in the country."

The lead pollution, then? "I've got four college degrees, and I grew up playing in the chat piles and swimming in the mill ponds. If I'm lead-damaged, by God, what would I have been, another Albert Einstein?"

If 67-year-old Roberta Richards had her way, she'd probably stay, too, but she's afraid to make a go in a town without law and order.

Sentimental strongholds
She hopes to get $70,000 for her house and is looking at a new place about 25 miles away. The hardest thing for her will be getting used to life without her daughter and grandkids as neighbors.

Some who left as the mines were closing are still sentimental about the place.

Steve Darnell remembers playing football on a field coated with lead dust and a town big enough to have two hospitals, three movie theaters and a bowling alley.

He sympathizes with the holdouts, but doesn't pretend to know what's in store for them if they stay.

"You can only go so far," says the 55-year-old, who now lives in Missouri. "It's not that much different than a gold-bust town."


Sirens cut the silence. Police and fire vehicles have lined up, and it's about to begin now, the parade marking Picher's 90th — and perhaps last — birthday. Something like 300 people have turned out to pay last respects.

"We cry every day," moans resident Louise Blalock, waiting in her minivan for the procession to start. "It's like a death, really."

"For what it is, I'm losing my heritage," says Steven Meador, who moved out of Picher in 1986 and lives in small town nearby.

"I feel like it's the end. That's why I'm here. This is it for me," says Norma Jean Skinner, who made the pilgrimage from California to say a proper goodbye.

Cars, pickups and motorcycles roll by. Locals on the floats toss suckers and Tootsie Rolls into the street, but many of the candies aren't scooped up because there are so few kids left here.

The parade ends at the Paul Thomas Funeral Home.

'It's just fading away'
After the parade, folks gather at the elementary school cafeteria for a reception.

Honky-tonk music sets the mood, and couples get up from bowls of beans and cornbread for one final twirl around the floor.

Paul Thomas, the town's silver-haired undertaker, sits in the back, dressed in a dark suit.

The 84-year-old has buried much of this town and can remember the days when Picher's streets were crowded.

"It's just fading away," Thomas says, looking straight ahead. "It just keeps getting smaller and smaller."

The people shouted, line-danced and swapped stories into the afternoon about first kisses, favorite teachers and long-gone eateries like the Chili King.
For a few more hours, they were the kings and queens of Picher, and no one could tell them this wouldn't last forever.

[tulsaoilerfan]

Truly a horrible situation for all the residents of Picher

[achiro]

The hills in the background of that "raw video of tornado damage in Picher" link are not really hills. They are giant mounds of toxic mining waste.

Man, you make the "chat piles" sound just horrible! Damn, we played all over those things growing up. They were not only great to sled down in the winter, you could get some pretty good speed in the summer as well. The mounds are actually just gravel that they pulled out of the mines as they dug them out. There apparently is lead and moreso lead dust in those piles which makes them "toxic"(all I can say is it's a wonder anyone in my dads family can feed themselves if they really are that bad ;) )
Problem is that gravel has been use for years in local roads, driveways, etc etc. so if the piles are toxic, so should all of Ottawa County. I haven't seen the documentary but have talked to several folks that live there about this. There are reasons that some aren't scared to leave.

As far as family, thank God they are all accounted for and safe, all happened to be out of town. Still haven't heard from some of our family friends though so please keep them in your prayers.

[BigRedJed]

Man, you make the "chat piles" sound just horrible! Damn, we played all over those things growing up. They were not only great to sled down in the winter, you could get some pretty good speed in the summer as well...
Nah, not me, or even the movie, which takes a pretty even-handed, personal approach to the community. I'm pretty sure the Environmental Protection Agency and countless scientists and doctors are the ones who make them sound horrible. From an AP story (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=%2Fn%2Fa%2F2007%2F02%2F27%2Ffinancia l%2Ff111939S88.DTL) in February:

...Dust from mountains of lead-contaminated chat, or mine waste, blows through town. The chat piles, some 100 feet high, look like gray sand dunes. Before the dangers of lead were understood, locals used to hold parties on the piles, and kids used them as sledding hills...
Anyway, I hope everything's OK with your family friends, and like everyone else here will keep them and you in my thoughts.

[r5TPsooner]

Picher is a tiny town very close to Commerce, in the NE part of the state. Used to be a boomtown thanks to the lead mines in town, especially during WWII. Lack of controls on lead mining led to giant cavities under the town, which are causing collapses and sinkholes. Also, the abandoned mines filled up with water, which became contaminated from the lead. To make matters worse, the companies left giant "chat" piles all over town, mountains of contaminated soil that blow in the wind, and that children play on, causing lead poisoning to be a huge problem.

The EPA has named it one of the top Superfund sites in the nation (it might be #1, I don't recall). Much of the controversy these days in Picher has been related to those who want to be bought out and start new lives elsewhere vs. those who want the government to come in and clean up the town they have called home their entire lives and in which they have lots of community pride. Property values have basically become worthless -- imagine putting your entire existence into building a life and a home, only to have it become worthless and impossible to sell.

Some people who live there see themselves as completely trapped, and just want to get out. Some have an unbelievable attachment to their little town, which was once a great, thriving boomtown. It's easy to feel for both sides.

Okie filmmakers Brad Beesley, Julianna Brannum and James Payne (http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/creekrunsred/filmmakers.html) made an amazing, beautiful, touching film about it about two years ago, called The Creek Runs Red (http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/creekrunsred/). Brad Beesley, BTW, did the wonderful Okie Noodling documentary, plus the incredible Flaming Lips biopic Fearless Freaks. Bands like the Lips and Starlight Mints contributed to the soundtrack of The Creek Runs Red. If you want to find out more about Picher, and about the people of Oklahoma, watch that movie. You can see a preivew on that main PBS page, but surf around and look at the other pages. You can also check out the film's website here (http://www.thecreekrunsred.com/).

Thoughts and prayers for the people of Picher.

That's just a damned shame.

[Newbomb Turk]

I feel just horrible for the people of Picher.

God be with them.

[olevetonahill]

God sez Pay tention Folks Get the **** Outta here !
I really do Hope and Pray that they land On on their Feet.

[badger]

I was out there yesterday. It looks awful and the people I met who either accepted the buyout and left lifelong residences in Picher or who still live there for whatever reason (teachers, firefighters) - everyone is nearly in tears over what happened.