One year after the storm, Tulsans remember the chaos

By: Liza Mata

Jerry Holloway and his family did not anticipate the events of the Oklahoma Grand Ice Storm of 2007. A beautiful vision of “winter wonderland” ended up chaotically in a matter of days. His house was severely damaged, but he and his family made the best out of the situation.

The Holloways were out of electricity for eight days.

The first night of the storm was uneventful. Holloway said he and his family stayed at the house and heard branches falling outside.

Holloway said that the next morning, “We heard a limb fall and hit our house and walked outside.”

He said they started hearing “some really large cracks.” Holloway said that they noticed quite a few tree branches around their driveway, but “nothing that we couldn’t easily work around.”

The Holloways have very large trees around their driveway. Some of them are almost four feet wide and have limbs that are about the size of some trees, Holloway said.

Holloway was standing on his driveway seeing what was going to happen with some of those trees. He said they had a tree limb fall exactly in the center of their driveway “that was absolutely huge.”

Tree limbs continued to fall during the rest of the day. One fell on the house and pierced the roof all the way into the attic, but didn’t go all the way through, Holloway said.

“There were so many limbs down you couldn’t drive in and out of our house,” Holloway said.
However, they tried to make the best out of the situation.

Holloway said they were very fortunate to have a gas stove and battery-run water heaters in their house. They had plenty of wood in their fireplace and groceries.

He said they camped out by the fireplace with candles the first night without power.

Unique things happen at times when things appear to be bad, Holloway said.

Holloway went out to his garage and found an old generator that used to belong to his dad, who passed away in 2005.

That generator appeared to not have been used for over 30 years, he said. Holloway cleaned it and put gas in it and “the first time I pulled it, it started,” he said.

They were able to turn on some lights and the TV for a few days.

Like most people in Tulsa, they made it through “just on our camping skills,” Holloway said.

Holloway said that his worst experience was the fear of major damage to their home, from the trees that surround it. They could have lost their home.

When the electricity came back on, he said, everyone was elated. It was a great celebration.

His best experience was making fried pies in the fireplace with camping tools. His mother-in-law also stayed in his house. Holloway said it was a nice family time.

During the storm, they started to work with the help of some family friends to remove all the debris from his property.

Holloway said that they worked on repairs and removal of tree branches all the way into the spring.