Ozark residents concerned by locked storm shelter during tornado warning

OZARK, Mo. – Residents in Ozark are voicing their concerns after one of the storm shelters in town did not open during Sunday night’s tornado warning.

“I was very scared, but I was talking to somebody the entire time,” said Ozark resident Patricia Parsley. “The good Lord.”

The shelter at the Ozarks Community Center gets unlocked by staff or the Ozark Police Department if there is a tornado watch. On Sunday night, there wasn’t a watch issued over Ozark, as the city went straight into a tornado warning.

The city says they have been working to get remote access available for the O.C. storm shelter and expect it sometime in the near future.

But Parsley says something should be done right now.

“That is uncalled for,” Parsley said.

85-year-old Parsley uses a walker or cane to get around. She has a shelter in her backyard, but she can’t use it anymore because it has a stepladder in the ground.

On Sunday, Parsley drove to the O.C. to seek shelter.

“It seemed like hours, waiting for somebody to show up,” Parsley said. “And finally nobody showed. And everybody left. It became very obvious nobody was coming.”

Parsley was one of the many people stuck outside in the rain while the tornado sirens were going off because the O.C. shelter’s doors were locked.

“Ultimately we’ve been looking at the technology to prevent it from happening again because we recognize that fail-safes need to be in place,” said Interim Parks Director Hayden Ponsar.

For after-hours, the city works with OPD to open the facility. The city tells OzarksFirst police were responding to a car crash when the sirens went off.

“I can’t imagine how scary it was,” Ponsar said. “And so I look forward to making those positive changes so it doesn’t happen like that again.”

Ponsar says this is the first time since the shelter opened 15 years ago that a situation like this has happened.

“The tornadoes don’t leave you a message saying, ‘I’ll be there at 6:00 tonight, you be ready for me,'” Parsley said. “They have drop down at any time.”

Until they can get remote access to the shelter, Ponsar says more keys will be given out to city staff.

“I don’t see any excuse for what happened,” Parsley said. “It should’ve been opened up.”

Parsley says if it wasn’t for a family who was also waiting outside the shelter, she wouldn’t have been able to make it back up the hill.

“I was scared to death down there,” Parsley said. “I thought we was all goners. And we would have been, had it hit.”

Ozarks Technical Community College also has a storm shelter about five minutes down the road from the O.C.

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