Oklahoma County disposing of environmentally hazardous tornado debris

The mangled fishing boat in the field? Hurled there from a storage spot hundreds of yards up the dirt road.

"These are all the pieces of our life,” Steve Johnson said, gazing across his eight-acre family homestead that was ripped apart May 10 by a tornado.

The family has spent the past two weeks looking for anything salvageable.

It’s clear they’ll have to drag most of their things down the dirt road for Oklahoma County tornado debris collection crews to haul away.

"It’s just a reverse of the old saying — what was one man’s treasure is now one man’s trash,” said Myles Davidson, special projects coordinator for Oklahoma County District 2, one of many agencies involved in the weeks-long tornado debris removal process.

Some household items turned to trash by tornadoes can cause environmental hazards if not disposed of correctly, so county officials are working with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and state Department of Environmental Quality to run an environmentally conscious tornado debris burn pit outside Harrah.

Most pieces of the Johnson family’s life soon will be there.