Mom and children saved after getting stuck for a week of tornado junk

A mother and her three children were rescued from their rural home a week after the third widest tornado in the Oklahoma history swept through a county.

“It was a worship service,” said Mike Haynes, district two commissioner in Pittsburg County, whose crew worked with minimum requirements from Mack Alford Correctional Center to clear the county road and the private lane leading to the woman’s home on Tuesday, May 27.

“They worked with the tails. We handed them chainsaws,” he tells People. “They cut wood. Some of them looked like timber jackets.”

On Monday, May 19, the EF-3-Tornado blew through home, threw vehicles and took down power lines in the city of Pittsburg, which resulted in no water for several days. A week after the storm, Haynes says that the farmers still missed some of their livestock and one of his employees navigated the loss of her home, which was completely demolished.

In response to the devastation, his 24-person crew spent days working directly to clear fallen trees and debris from the roads and people’s homes. Even with the help of crews from neighboring counties, there was still more debris to clear.

So when Haynes received a call from Margaret Green, the Warden of the Correctional Center in neighboring Atoka County, “he jumped” on her offer to send 10 prisoners to help clear brush. (Green did not immediately respond to people’s request for comment.)

The first stop was the mother, who was stranded because of the storm.

The woman lives on a distant road, about six miles from the nearest town, said officials. While the county had been able to clear an output path for a small vehicle, there was more work to be done to make the mileage stretch of road throughout as several trees had fallen down.

“She had a starting path, but it was a tough starting path,” Haynes says. “It was tough.”

With chainsaws in the hand, about 10 men spent from the county and the prisoners about eight hours cleaning out trees and laying branches through a wooden chip. The prisoners, who voluntarily helped, had to first have to meet strict safety and behavioral requirements before going to work. They were carefully monitored during the day, according to an edition shared by Oklahoma Department of Corrections.

“They knocked it out in short work,” Haynes says. Without their help, it would have taken his crew twice as much time as they helped in other areas.

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The woman was grateful for the help, and so was the county workers.

“All our guys are already worn, so reinforcements come in and help was good,” says Foreman JB Sharp.

The prisoners from Mack Alford will work with the county until the storm recovery is complete, says Haynes. It was also an advantage for those prisoners.

“All a man needs to do is reconcile, and they have given us a chance to do so,” said Brandon Boring, a prisoner, according to the Oklahoma Department of Corrections. “If you let a man reconcile, we can actually go back and be great members of society.”