Five People Dead After Tornado Hits Oklahoma

Five people died when a tornado struck in and around the northwest Oklahoma town of Woodward early today, one of a series of tornadoes that erupted across the Midwest and Plains over the weekend, authorities said.

Woodward Mayor Roscoe Hill said he didn’t hear sirens before the tornado hit. The National Weather Service said the tornado struck at 12:18am. “We had a little tornado earlier …. and they blew all the sirens. When this one came in, our sirens weren’t working. We didn’t have a very good storm alert,” he said.

An Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management spokeswoman said that state medical examiner’s office had confirmed five fatalities in the Woodward area, though she didn’t know the gender or age of the victims or details of their death. Woodward was among the many communities in the nation’s midsection under a “high-end, life-threatening event” that had been issued by the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla. The center specializes in tornado forecasting and emitted the extraordinary warning nearly two days before the bad weather hit.