Creek County’s deadliest tornado on record is the F4 of June 8, 1974. It killed 14 people and injured 150 along its 29-mile path. From 1950 through 2025, 76 tornadoes touched the county, according to NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center (SPC). The county also keeps its own safe room registry on a paper form.

Cutaway illustration of a house with a storm shelter below the garage floor and a separate underground shelter in the back yard
Two common placements: below the garage floor and underground in the yard.

One F5 and four F4s

Date Rating Deaths Injured Path length and counties
June 8, 1974 F4 14 150 29 miles, three counties
May 5, 1960 F5 5 81 71.8 miles, four counties
April 26, 1984 F4 3 37 22 miles, two counties
April 29, 1984 F4 1 60 27 miles, three counties
May 1, 1954 F4 0 65 59.2 miles, three counties

Two of the F4s came three days apart in April 1984. The 1974 tornado also crossed Tulsa County, and the 1960 F5 also crossed Pottawatomie County. Each rating is the worst damage anywhere on the path. Deaths and injuries cover the whole path, which can extend beyond Creek County.

Other deadly tornadoes

An F3 on April 2, 1956 killed 5 people and injured 68 on a 42.6-mile path. An F1 on May 30, 1976 killed 2. Its recorded path was 0.1 mile, inside Creek County. Tornadoes that touched the county account for 30 deaths in all.

Mostly weak tornadoes lately

Eleven of the 76 tornadoes fell in 2016–2025. None of those was rated EF3 or stronger. Across the whole record, 54 were F0/EF0 or F1/EF1. Early records missed more weak tornadoes. So the F3/EF3-or-stronger count is the better way to compare periods. One tornado has no known rating. For one older tornado, SPC estimated the rating later from damage and path length.

The county safe room registry

Creek County Emergency Management, based in Sapulpa, registers safe rooms and storm cellars on paper. You download the form, print it, fill it in and mail it to the address on the form. It asks for:

  • the shelter’s GPS coordinates
  • your fire district
  • your school district

Check those fields before you send it. The same county page offers free weather-alert sign-up for mobile devices.

Stony ground over clay

Of the county’s mapped land, 37.4% has soils rated high or very high for shrink-swell, meaning clay that swells when wet and shrinks as it dries. Only 0.9% is very high. Just 0.9% is rated high or very high in the surface layer. The largest high-rated unit, at 112,626 acres, is the Niotaze-Bigheart-Rock outcrop complex. It is very stony ground on 3–15% slopes. Steeper Niotaze-Bigheart units add more. If you are pricing an in-ground shelter, ask each installer whether its quote assumes digging through rock. The survey covers rural as well as town land and does not show the conditions at your shelter spot.

For city permit rules, see storm shelters in Sapulpa. Published installation costs are on storm shelter costs in Oklahoma.

Getting quotes in Creek County

Request a quote and ask the installer to look at the ground where the shelter would go before pricing it. Ask for these to be listed as separate lines:

  • any required permit and its fee
  • any rock excavation
  • dirt removal

Also ask whether the installer will fill in the county registry form once the shelter is in.