Don Nickles: “Yesterday, Senator Inhofe and myself, Congressmen J.C. Watts, Frank Lucas and Steve Largent, as well as the Governor of…”

“Yesterday, Senator Inhofe and myself, Congressmen J.C. Watts, Frank Lucas and Steve Largent, as well as the Governor of Oklahoma, and James Lee Witt, Director of FEMA, toured the Oklahoma tornado disaster. I have been in the Senate, I guess, 19 years now, and I have looked at the damage of several tornadoes in the State for the last many years. But I have never seen this type of devastation nor this level and this extent before. This may be the most devastating tornado that we have had in total damages in our State history. It has certainly produced one of the largest tornadoes, probably the largest number of tornadoes. I read one press account that said there were 45 tornadoes in the State of Oklahoma on Monday. One particular tornado was much larger than the others. Many reports said it was a quarter of a mile wide, or maybe half a mile wide, and at some points it was maybe a mile wide and stayed on the ground for a long period of time--some people said maybe as much as 2 hours. What we did see was a tremendous amount of damage--a devastating amount of damage that destroyed, it was estimated, 1,500 or 2,000 homes. We will find out. Unfortunately, it has taken 40-some lives. I say unfortunately. I think Oklahoma is very fortunate. I think the fatality toll could have been in the hundreds if not thousands, because we looked at homes that were just totally demolished as if a bomb had gone inside each one of those homes and absolutely exploded the homes.”