Oklahoma town backs buffet where bug kills 1
Posted on Friday, August 29, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/News/235671/
LOCUST GROVE, Okla. — Townspeople are rallying around those affected by an E. coli outbreak, including the owners of a restaurant believed to be the source, business owners say.
Authorities believe one death was caused by the contamination.
At Vickie’s Flower Station in downtown Locust Grove, orders have been going out to the more than 40 people sickened by the illness and the Country Cottage restaurant, owner Vickie Herr said Thursday.
Restaurant owners Dale and Linda Moore are “wonderful people” who step up with support whenever there is a fire, or other traumatic event in the community. Their large buffetstyle eatery is especially popular with tourists.
“They are absolutely devastated over people being sick,” Herr said, as she sat behind by the counter of her shop in a converted gas station.
“If there is a death in the family, they are the first people to bring food. If there is a catastrophe of any sort, they are the first ones there.”
Though the Country Cottage has not been confirmed as the source of the E. coli bacteria, a number of people have told investigators with the Oklahoma Department of Health that they ate there before becoming sick, said Larry Weatherford, a department spokesman.
“There is a clear connection between the E. coli outbreak and this restaurant,” he said. “We don’t think it is a specific food. We think there was cross-contamination inside the restaurant.”
The restaurant voluntarily closed and hasn’t served food since Sunday.
Two employees at the restaurant were among the ill, The Associated Press reported, but investigators have not determined whether they caused the illness or became sick after eating there.
The bacteria killed 26-yearold bank employee Chad Ingle of Pryor, Okla., and caused at least 41 others to be hospitalized, including several young children who needed dialysis after suffering kidney failure. More than three-quarters of the victims ate at the Country Cottage, investigators found.
Locust Grove is in northeast Oklahoma, about 40 miles west of Siloam Springs.
At Vickie’s, Herr paused a moment to answer a ringing telephone.
“Flower shop,” she said, then gave the caller the latest information about the outbreak.
“Most of the news stations only want to report the negative stuff — none of the positives.”
After hanging up, she counted at least four television stations — from Tulsa and elsewhere — that have come through town.
In Arkansas, there were no confirmed cases Thursday from the Oklahoma outbreak, said Ann Wright, a spokesman for the Arkansas Department of Health.
But a Vilonia woman, Gelia Ruple, said her father, David Waddle of Cabot who ate at the Country Cottage on Aug. 17, was admitted to Siloam Springs Memorial Hospital and is gravely ill.
Aug. 17 was also the day Ingle reportedly ate at the restaurant.
Waddle, 61, hasn’t been diagnosed with an E. coli infection, Ruple said. His doctors at the hospital strongly suspect it and are treating him on the assumption the bacteria is behind what at first seemed a mysterious illness, she said.
After Ruple learned of the outbreak and her father’s connection to the restaurant, she urged the doctors to run E. coli tests late Monday or early Tuesday. They are awaiting test results, which she was told take three to five days.
“He’s in kidney failure today, and his [blood ] platelets are low,” she said, who added her father works as a construction superintendent for Flintco Construction Co. on a Cherokee Casino project in West Siloam Springs, Okla.
“They are going to put him on dialysis.”
Ruple said her stepmother, Pat Waddle, 61, also ate at the buffet on Aug. 17 but did not get sick. The Waddles both ate the cole slaw but otherwise visited different parts of the buffet.
Ruple reported her father’s illness to the Arkansas Department of Health and was told officials plan to interview her father when he is able.
She hopes that in doing so, she might help alert others who became ill of the possible connection to the restaurant, so that they might help their doctors expedite testing as she did.
“If someone who knew my father had eaten there had not informed us that it had been in the news, my father would have died,” Ruple said. “The hospital wanted to treat him for salmonella or some other food poisoning.”
Back in Locust Grove, rival restaurants are standing up for the Moores.
At Cook’s Restaurant, a downtown landmark for nearly a century, owner Linda Shipley had nothing but praise and sympathy for the Cottage’s owners, especially Linda Moore.
“Country Cottage is one of the cleanest, prettiest restaurants you’ll ever go into,” she said while taking a break in a back booth of her restaurant. “I feel for her.”
The news of the outbreak is hitting the town’s restaurants during a lull before the Labor Day holiday, one of the busiest weekends of the year, she said.
“We’d just like to know what it is and how it got started,” Shipley said.