Officials: Oklahoma Tornado Damaged Vehicles Must Be Moved

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Officials in Moore say vehicles that have been abandoned since being damaged by the May 20 killer tornado that struck the Oklahoma City suburb must be moved by June 12 or they will be impounded.

An estimated 300 vehicles remain scattered in the city. Vehicles are not claimed by 8 p.m. Wednesday will be towed away and the owners will have to pay the expenses that include towing and impound fees, City Manager Steve Eddy told The Norman Transcript

The vehicles that are not picked up will be towed by L & A Wreckers.

The towing fee will be dependent on how far the car has to be towed. The abandoned cars, ones not claimed or picked up by insurance companies, will be towed off and a notice sent to the owners. The cars will remain at L & A Wreckers for 30 days before the company can do anything with them.

“Most cars left up there are going to be scrap iron,” Wilkerson said L & A owner Linda Wilkerson.

About 30 of the autos are in the parking lot of Moore Medical Center and none belong to hospital employees, according to spokeswoman Kelly Wells of the Norman Regional Health System, the Moore hospital’s owner.

Some of the vehicles may have been thrown into the lot by the tornado while others may have been dragged there if they were blocking a street, Wells said.

The Norman Regional Health System has made a list of the makes and models of the unclaimed vehicles on the hospital lot. Owners may call the health system’s security line at 307-1482 to see if theirs is on the list.

The May 20 EF5 tornado destroyed the hospital, two elementary schools and left 24 dead in its wake, including seven children at Plaza Towers Elementary School.

The tornado came a day after a tornado struck Shawnee and left two people dead and 11 days before another severe storm produced a second EF5 tornado that left at least 20 people dead in the Oklahoma City metro area.