Recently in Oklahoma Category
CNN: Why did this cop turn up dead?
A surprising, shocking, largely unknown story from the Murrah Building bombing, by CNN senior writer Thomas Lake, published March 3, 2023. Related Twitter thread by Mises Caucus here (unrolled here).
"Terry Yeakey... was an Oklahoma City police officer and a military veteran. Yeakey saved at least three people from the ruins of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995, the day a terrorist attack killed 168 people and injured hundreds of others.
"Something happened to Yeakey in those hours in the wreckage. He was badly shaken, and his worldview seemed to change. In time, he grew suspicious and afraid. He ran afoul of his supervisors. He went on secret missions, withholding his motives and plans from fellow officers. He seemed to be conducting his own investigation.
"And then, 385 days after the bombing, his body was found near some trees in a field off a country road. His wrists were cut. His neck was cut. He'd been shot through the head.
"The authorities said it was suicide. But among those who knew Terry Yeakey, not many believed he had killed himself."
Bootstrap Farm is starting its first winter-season Community Supported Agriculture program. Members can subscribe to a weekly share of late fall and winter vegetables ("winter squash, root vegetables, fall and winter cabbage, brocolli, brussel sprouts, cauliflower, a wide range of greens, and hopefully tomatoes out of one of our greenhouses"). Other subscriptions are available for full-fat milk, bread and baked goods, eggs, jellies, and fermented foods (like sauerkraut and kimchi). Everything is produced without pesticides or fertilizers.
Small-town Oklahoma has some good coffee houses, too.
An open letter to the Sooner Nation from an Ohio State fan - OUDaily.com: Opinion
"As we wandered around in our Buckeye regalia, you greeted us with 'Welcome to Norman, we're glad you came.' You asked if you could help us find anything. You offered advice on where to park on game-day. You suggested restaurants we might enjoy. (We tried Blackbird Gastropub and enjoyed it so much that we returned to it on Saturday.)...
"We returned to the Blackbird, where we enjoyed more Norman hospitality. Our server even remembered us from the day before. As we were enjoying a drink and waiting for our meal, a gentleman approached our table with yet another 'welcome.' During the conversation, he recommended a restaurant in OKC that we might want to try after the game. As he was singing its praises, I jokingly asked if he was a stockholder in the place. He replied that, no he wasn't. He said, 'I'm a local legislator and I like to promote the area.' He later came back to the table and offered to take a group photo of us with one of our phones. We took him up on the offer. During the afternoon he sent beer to our table. Twice. I wish I had asked his name so I could thank him publicly....
"As game-time approached, we wandered across your campus, taking in the festival atmosphere that you are obviously very good at creating. As we passed tailgate parties, we received more welcomes.
"After the game, you proved to be very gracious over the loss of a great football game between two of the most storied programs in the country. Many of you told us that you are looking forward to going to Columbus for the game next year. I hope we can be the hosts that you were."
Oklahoma town knows how to survive oil busts: a backup plan
November 4, 2015, Associated Press story by Tammy Webber about the how residents of Ponca City, Oklahoma were coping with the collapse of oil prices on the local economy, drawing on experience of past oil crunches.
Why We Chop Down Cedar Trees | Confessions of a Pioneer Woman | Ree Drummond
A guest post by Ree's husband, Ladd Drummond, about the menace to ranching and the natural environment posed by the eastern red cedar, an invasive species that sucks water out of the ground, reducing the native grasses available for grazing.
NWS JetStream - RIDGE Radar Downloads
How to download National Weather Service radar imagery, one layer and snapshot at a time. Explains file naming conventions and directory locations. (The nearest radar station to Tulsa is INX, just west of Inola on US 412.
Why There Was No Basement Tornado Shelter in That Oklahoma City School « LewRockwell.com Blog
"Politicians like himself will always spend taxpayers' money in a way that enhances THEIR popularity and maximizes THEIR chances for re-election. There are orders of magnitude more votes to be had in handing out welfare benefits or lavish public employee pensions than in replacing leaky water lines. Public employees are well organized politically; the average taxpaying citizens are not.... Putting a basement in a new school building will not motivate government school teachers to spend thousands of hours campaigning and driving voters to the polls in school buses. Promises of pay and pension increases will."
The writer has a point about politicians, but it doesn't apply to Oklahoma and the way we finance education and school facilities. School bond issues can only be used for capital improvements and equipment, not operating costs. If anything, school bond issue supporters here work for low voter turnout; I've never heard of driving people to the polls in school buses, which I'm pretty sure would be against the law. Heavy construction companies are usually very supportive of school bond issues, since they stand to win the contracts to do the work, and publicly-funded construction can take up the slack when the economy has stalled new commercial construction. There's plenty of political incentive to build school tornado shelters; I suspect the hindrance is practical. Oklahoma just doesn't have many basements. (Remember what happened to Tulsa's buried Belvedere.) Blair, Oklahoma, has an impressively large, partially buried storm shelter on its school playground, easily seen from US 283, about 20' wide by 70' long, built in 1928 after a tornado destroyed the school.
American Meteorology Society Journals Online - Tornado Damage Survey at Moore, Oklahoma
After the May 3, 1999, Moore / Midwest City tornado, the Wind Science and Engineering Research Center at Texas Tech University conducted a damage survey to determine the causes of structural failure. The team found that methods of construction -- joining roof to walls to slab -- permitted by code were inadequate to handle structural loads caused when the wind lifts up the roof. When a home is destroyed by a tornado, it becomes a collection of projectiles that the tornado can use to destroy the next house. Even if you build a sturdier house, it can be destroyed by the whirling remains of the shoddy home next door. The team was disappointed to learn that new houses being built after the tornado failed to incorporate improvements that would make the structures more resilient to high winds.
"Although it is true there are no provisions in building codes to construct houses to resist tornadoes, building codes are still important in mitigating tornado damage. A better-built house would yield less debris in a tornado, and occupants would have a better chance of surviving in such a house. In addition, structural improvements could reduce the level of damage to a house that experiences weaker tornadoes or straight-line thunderstorm winds that are just above code-required design levels and hence could mitigate economic loss and improve safety."
"As noted from our damage survey, numerous housing failures initiated with destruction of attached garages. In a typical case, garage doors blew in, allowing internal pressures to act in combination with external aerodynamic uplift pressures to remove the garage roof structure. Uplift on the roof structure caused toenailed connections in the wooden top plates to pull apart. Destruction of the attached garage frequently led to damage or the removal of the remaining roof structure on the residence."
"When the author visited the post-tornado reconstruction area, 6 of the 40 new houses contained tornado shelters or safe rooms; however, these homes generally were not built any better than prior to the tornado. Thus, homeowners appeared to be making the decision to provide for personal safety (i.e., building a safe room) instead of to increase housing strength (to provide property protection and increased safety). This decision may, in part, be based on the assumption that it is unreasonable or uneconomical to try to construct houses for the high wind speeds described on the F scale."
The Associated Press: Wireless-only households state-by-state
We're number one! 26.2% of Oklahoma households, 25.1% of adults rely solely on wireless phone service.
