Sulphur residents recount stories of survival as cleanup begins

Monday, the National Weather Service confirmed 25 tornadoes touched down across Oklahoma Saturday as part of an outbreak that wreaked havoc across parts of Texas and up through the midwest.

Among the hardest-hit communities is Sulphur, a town of 5,000 residents.

Late Saturday, an EF-3 tornado ripped through the town’s historic downtown district and across multiple blocks of a nearby neighborhood.

Homes were either flattened or stripped of their roofs. Some are left with just two walls standing.

“They’re all in my living room. This was a carport. This was a front porch,” said Roshelle Sisneros pointing out volunteers combing through a pile of debris.

Looking at the little remains of the house Sisneros called home with her teenage son and daughter, there’s heartbreak but also gratitude.

“It was only by the Grace of God that we made it out of here because we shouldn’t have,” said Sisneros.

Sisneros said with a house full of teenagers, she’d ensured there was room in a neighbor’s nearby storm cellar. But as they watched the storm approach from home, she realized it was too late to escape.

“The next thing you know, it starts getting really loud so we go to go out the front door, and the pressure was already there. There was nothing we could do about it. I screamed, ‘We’ve all got to go back to the bathroom’,” she said.

In the aftermath, the tub that she crammed into with four teenagers is one of the only parts of her house that remains. As the ceiling above was ripped away, debris landed between them and the bathroom’s vanity.

“Nothing heavy hit a single one of us. I had the dog in my hands cradled. We were all cradling each other. Nothing touched us. I swear there was a bubble over us,” she said. 

At a press conference Monday, officials announced the one person killed in Sulphur was a long-time resident.

“We lost a hometown girl on Saturday night and that’s devastating to the community,” said incident commander Pete Haines.

Haines said while they expect to receive more reports of minor injuries, everyone in Sulphur is accounted for.

For now, structural concerns in the hard-hit downtown remain a top priority, as does making sure volunteers coming in to help can get to those in need.

Clean-up at Sisneros’s home was expedited as a group of volunteers walked up, offering a hand.

“I don’t know them at all. They just showed up here, and I’m incredibly grateful to them. To show up in chaos is a remarkable thing,” she said.

Local officials said Tuesday that they’re also in contact with FEMA about financial assistance for those impacted.