Woman killed when tornado tears through sports bar, burying patrons in rubble

SULPHUR, Okla. (KOCO) – A tornado survivor recounted the moment when a tornado tore through her Oklahoma bar, killing one of her regulars.

“I turned around at the point, I turned around and I dove under the bar. And I got to the side of the bar and the floor,” Raina Valkoun said. “I got flat, and next thing I knew all of the rubble was on top of me.”

Valkoun recounted the moment strong storms blew out her bar’s windows in downtown Sulphur, Oklahoma. By the time she took cover, the building had collapsed.

She thinks at least 12 people were still inside when the structure gave way.

Valkoun was buried for 40 minutes.

“All I heard was more screaming and I was under there just trying, I had a pocket of air, so I just kept trying to calm myself down,” she said.

Valkoun was eventually pulled from the pile of debris, along with others that were at the bar. Unfortunately, one of her patrons didn’t emerge.

She said the customer had been standing at the bar’s front door. The woman was a regular at Raina’s Sports Lounge for more than a decade.

“She used to sit right next there, that was her seat,” Valkoun said, pointing to the customer’s usual spot in her bar.

Valkoun said the woman’s kids were her life.

“Oh, she was a grandmother, has two children, a boy and a girl,” Valkoun said. “Fantastic woman, used to bring us food every Friday night for us to eat, sometimes good, sometimes it wasn’t, but most times it was good.”

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