GENTRY — Friends and family of Curtis and Cheryl Galloway were helping the couple sift through what was left of their home to gather up belongings on Friday morning. The couple was not home at the time, but a small tornado touched down shortly before 6 p.m. on Thursday, tearing off the tin roof from their house, knocking out brick walls and blowing away a car port.
Their home, at 145 WPA Road on the west edge of Gentry, was pretty much a total loss, with the roof blown off on the west side and walls out on two sides of the home. And debris was scattered in the fields and pastures to the east. A four by four was sticking out of the ground to the west of the Gallaway home and other pieces of lumber could be seen driven into the ground to the northeast of the home.
The Gallaway home was insured, Curtis Gallaway said, but insurance can’t replace all that was lost or destroyed.
The McKee Foods plant in Gentry, to the east of the Galloway home, also suffered damage, with a building in the truck shop area blown apart and debris falling on parked cars and trucks on the property. A pile of debris was piled up in the parking lot on Friday morning. Damage was reported to a number of cars in the parking lot and to semi tractors parked in the lot at the time of the storm.
According to Vester Cripps, Gentry fire chief, no injuries were reported as a result of the storm, but damage began at homes to the west of the Gallaway Home and continued along a path which ended at Arkansas Highway 59 and Peterson Rd., where trees were shattered and uprooted. The fire department removed trees from the roadway after the storm.
Cripps said some other homes and buildings along the path of the storm had shingles blown off of roofs, including some homes in the Pine Circle area of Gentry.
According to the National Weather Service in Tulsa, the damage was attributed to a small tornado, which was rated an EF1 on the Enhanced Fujita scale.
An EF1 tornado has wind speeds from 86 to 110 mph and causes moderate damage — stripping roofs, overturning mobile homes, tearing off exterior doors and breaking out windows, according to the NOAA Storm Prediction Center website.
"McKee Foods Corporation Gentry Operations experienced moderate property damage due to 70-plus mph winds Thursday," the company said in a release on Friday.
"Damage includes insignificant structures and some vehicles, both company-owned and employee-owned. No personnel were injured.
"Structural damage occurred to the transportation employees’ entrance and to a shed in the company’s Transportation Department area. The shed is a storage building used to store roller tracks used in offloading trailers. A water leak in the vicinity of electrical equipment required those to both be shut off out of caution.
"The company’s main transportation and manufacturing facilities were not affected. Vehicle damage includes employee vehicles and six company-owned tractor rigs," the release states.
“We are first and foremost thankful for God’s presence and that His hand protected our employees from harm,” said Tim Broughton, vice president of McKee Foods Gentry Operations.