The Tragedy Of Tar Creek and Complete Devastation In Picher, OK(F-4 Tornado, 5/10/08)

[RedEarth]

First a Superfund site and now Complete Devastation due to an F-4 tornado on May 10th.

The Tragedy od Tar Creek
Time




The photo above is an example of Tar Creek's acid mine water effects on vegetation.


Like a scene from a science-fiction movie. Mountains of mine tailings, some as tall as 13-story buildings, others as wide as four football fields, loom over streets, homes, churches and schools. Dust, laced with lead, cadmium and other poisonous metals, blows off the man-made hills and 800 acres of dry settling ponds. "It gets in your teeth," says Sparkman, head of a local citizens' group. "It cakes in your ears and hair. It's like we've been environmentally raped."

Hyperbole? Drive through the desolate towns around Picher, Okla., and you might think differently. This is eco-assault on an epic scale. The prairie here in the northeast corner of the state is punctured with 480 open mine shafts and 30,000 drill holes. Little League fields have been built over an immense underground cavity that could collapse at any time. Acid mine waste flushes into drinking wells. When the water rises in Tar Creek, which runs through the site, a neon-orange scum oozes onto the roadside. Wild onions, a regional delicacy tossed into scrambled eggs, are saturated with cadmium — which may explain, local doctors say, why three different kidney dialysis centers have opened here to serve a population of only 30,000

But the grimmest legacy of a century of intensive lead and zinc mining are the "lead heads," or "chat rats," as the kids who grew up around here are known. As toddlers, they played in sandboxes of chat — the powdery output of mills after ore is extracted from rock. As preteens, they rode their bikes across the gravel mounds and swam in lime-green sinkholes. Their parents used mine tailings to make driveways and foundations, never thinking that contaminated dust might blow through the heating ducts of their ranch houses. In the past decade, studies have shown that up to 38% of local children have had high levels of lead in their blood — an exposure that can cause permanent neurological damage and learning disabilities. "Our kids hit a brick wall," says Kim Pace, principal of the Picher-Cardin Elementary School. "Their eyes skip and jump. It takes them 100 repetitions to learn a sound."

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101040426-612395,00.html






Complete Devastation In Picher
Saturday, May 10 2008 @ 10:52 PM GMT-6
Contributed by: starbird
Views: 17
Heather Goff, spokesperson for Freeman Health System, is reporting 36 injured have been taken there so far as a result of tornado damage Saturday.



John Sparkman, of Picher, Okla., characterized the damage done by a tornado in the Northeast Oklahoma community this evening as “complete devastation.”

“The whole south part of town is much totally destroyed. ... The path of destuction has to be a half-mile wide.”




Same house before storm

Storm Slide Show Tulsa World
http://www.tulsaworld.com/webextra/content/2008/slideshows/picher_tornado/index.aspx