Jun. 21—INGALLS — The oak tree fell just past the patio and another one in the field beyond the house. Out in the pasture, more trees fell; one blackjack oak, two 100-year-old pecan trees and a mulberry tree.

Scott Watson and his wife, Linda, heard the storm roll in on Saturday, but he figured he’d be just as safe in his bed as anywhere else.

The high-powered winds that tore through Oklahoma late Saturday and early Sunday left behind uprooted trees, damaged roofs and structures and downed power lines.

In Ingalls, Watson’s home is in an area that Stillwater’s Central Rural Electric Cooperative services.

“The electric went out roughly about 12:15 a.m. and it came back on the following morning about 5 a.m.,” Watson said. “I don’t have a clue (about the wind speed), but based on the damage I’ve got, it had to be close to 100 miles an hour. All of the trees are laying going east, so that was straight line wind.”

The strong winds blew the Watsons’ garage door in. He finally got the door up, but then it stuck in that position. Watson said their power line comes out of Ingalls going north, and two or three poles were down.

The Watsons have lived on these 10 acres for 32 years. They have six horses, some of which are boarders. The horses, dog and cat were unharmed.

But those trees — which are special to them — are gone.

Watson stood at the base of the blackjack oak. At 6-foot-1, the tree dwarfed him by another four or five feet. The soil was mostly sandstone, making it more susceptible to high winds.

The 100-year-old pecan trees had a smaller root bulb and deeper root system, but that did not protect them from Saturday’s storm.

Across parts of seven counties they serve, CREC reported approximately 75 mph winds, with 135 broken poles and 5,690 meters without power. They own and operate approximately 4,000-square miles of power lines.

About 100 line personnel worked nonstop for 70 hours, said Jillanne Tebow, vice president of business development and marketing at CREC. In addition, they hired 14 contract crews to help.

“We were able to restore everyone’s power as of 9 p.m. (Tuesday),” Tebow said.

Oklahoma Gas and Electric Company worked to restore power to its members on Wednesday.

In Ripley, the damage was extensive. Rows of trucks lined the parking lot at Ripley High School. Contract crews from Neosho, Missouri, and Witchita, Kansas, packed out the parking lot at a local gas station. These workers included engineers, vegetation crews, linemen, troubleshooters and construction crews.

In a press release sent just after noon on Wednesday, OGE reported that their technology that automatically rerouted power, notified OGE of outages and allowed its devices to communicate with each other had restored power to 114,000 customers in less than 48 hours.

OGE strengthened cross arms and poles that helped prevent outages for many additional customers.

OGE also shipped nearly 2,000 cross arms, 250 transformers, 69 miles of wire and 430 poles across the service area to repair grid damage.

Crews restored power to 97% of customers and anticipate restoring power to 98% of customers by 10 p.m. Wednesday night.

Another storm with heavy rain, winds up to 55 mph and lightning moved through portions of the service area around 11 a.m. on Wednesday, creating additional outages and impacting restoration efforts.

Tebow said that CREC had 164 members that lost power from the new storm system.

“It’s fairly common when you have a large storm that comes through and then it was followed by the kind of a storm system today, any of those tree limbs that were halfway broken cause those limbs to fall and that may cause (new) outages,” Tebow said.

Watson said he is waiting on his insurance company to see if they will cover the cost of the tree cleanup.

“I’ve got my fingers crossed,” he said. “It’s clean up time now.”

In the meantime, he plans to stow the extra wood for his two wood burner stoves.

“I primarily burn oak, but pecan burns good,” Watson said. “Unless somebody needs some smoker wood, I could probably give them some smoker wood.”