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Quote:

Originally Posted by golfhobo (Post 525672)

Watching the news, and Moore, OK just got hit bad! Robertt is not my best friend... but, I pray he and his family are safe!
Please check in, robertt... if you have internet access. We want to know you are okay.

I REALLY appreciate ALL of the concern for me and my family. We just got our internet back Sunday and I was in K.C. for the weekend for a wedding and just got back last night, (Mon), so I'm trying to catch up with everybody. For some reason this thing won't let me tab to a new paragraph so this might be messy. I'm going to channel hobo for a bit so this will be a little bit of a book explaining my "story". As some of you know I work nights so of course I sleep during the day while the wife and son are at school. We knew we were going to have bad weather so when my wife left I jokingly told her to call and wake me up if there were any tornado's on the way, which ended up being pretty prophetic. She called me at about 2:45 Monday afternoon and said there was some bad stuff coming from our southwest. I got up and turned on our favorite weather guy, and he was talking about a "super cell" that had developed and it had a hook on it, meaning a tornado was about to form. Well the tornado formed and dropped down and the news helicopter was right there. They put up a track which was right toward where I live so I decided I probably ought to go put some real clothes on. I live in a cul-de-sac and there are 5 houses in it. I live in the first house on the left when you come in to it and the front of my house faces east. I noticed my neighbor and his wife out in their garage with the big screen on so I went over there to watch everything. I live between 19th, which is south of me and 4th, which is north and I'm on the east side of I-35 and west of Eastern Ave. Sorry for all the details but I thought it might help with a mental picture. So I'm at the neighbors watching everything and the tornado had started in New Castle and was working it's way towards us down 19th st. The sirens kept sounding for a while then they would go off again, it was kind of strange, well after about the 3rd time that happened, a voice come over the tornado speakers and said "City of Moore....take cover"! Nobody had ever heard that before. Well the sirens went off again and then they stayed on. Me and my neighbors wife were standing out in the cul-de-sac looking west when a friend called me and was giving me a blow by blow over the phone. At 19th and SanteFe it took a jog towards the NE. When it did that it was about 2 mi west of me as the crow flies and I could hear it. Everybody uses the train comparison, I thought it sounded like standing under a huge waterfall. Right after it went through Plaza Park Elementary we could start seeing the debris and of course it was getting louder and louder, that was about at the 7-eleven it hit that killed 3 people, the hospital is right across the street from that along with the Warren Theatre, bowling alley, banks, post office and such, and they are right beside I-35. I can see the theater from my back yard and now I can see the hospital too. At this point it's about a mile from us and we figured it was time to head to the cellar, which is at the second house on the right in our cul-de-sac, and it is in the back yard of their house which is on the north side of the house. Our neighbor was already in there with her 2 little ones, then the 2 neighbors I was with go in and I was last. After it crossed I-35 it turned just slightly SE and was coming directly at us again and I told everyone "It's coming right at us". The next road is broadway after I-35. When it got to broadway it turned back on an easterly track again, which is what saved my place. The cellar has double doors on it and I had one of them closed and I was peeking out of the other one with it about half way up. I held it open as long as I could but the debris got to be too much and at that moment I thought it was coming right at us anyway so I closed the door and me and the neighbor had to hold them closed. You could hear all of the debris hitting, the roar of the tornado, the ground vibrating, and your ears popping from the pressure change. As soon as it passed I opened the doors, it was pouring down rain, I looked to the north and said, "Oh my God, it's all gone"! You could see the tornado off to the east. The fences were blown down so the neighbor and I took off toward the neighborhood that had just gotten wiped out. There was water squirting up all over the place, the smell of gas, and of course we were just running over what use to be peoples houses. We were the first ones in there and pretty quickly other people started showing up. I just started hollering Hello! Hello! Pretty quick we heard somebody and found an elderly couple in one of those cellars in their garage. After we got all of the bricks and wood off of them we got the door open and got em out. He later told me he had just had the cellar put in last week! We were just running around hollering and we probably "rescued" 10 or 15 people from their cellars after digging through all the debris to get them out. 2 police officers and a guy with a back hoe showed up pretty quick and were clearing the road in the neighborhood. We worked our way back to the west as we were doing all this and went across Tower Rd to some metal buildings that served as shops and business's. I had remembered this one gentleman always pulling in this one shop with his truck and I could see that truck so I went to that building looking for him. A kid that worked in a shop next to his said he lived in a trailer inside the shop, I asked where the trailer was and he said he didn't know. Well come to find out, the trailer was pulled out of the building with him in it to the field that is behind my house, and all that was left of it was the bottom part of the frame. He was laying out beside it deceased. I had found out later that there was another body out there but we had not seen them. Well at this point my cell service was gone not to mention my battery was almost dead! Friends and family that I hadn't seen in years were trying to get ahold of me and of course my wife, brother and cousins were freaking out because they couldn't get ahold of me and thought the worse. My wife was finally able to get ahold of me, thank goodness, before service went out for good that day and night. I had a metal shed in my back yard that the footers were bolted into the concrete pad and it took it, pulled the bolts, shed, and footers and put it in my neighbors back yard and everything that was in it mower, tools, clothes, papers, were left in the same place I had put them! Crazy! Our fence was wiped out, and I can't begin to describe how much debris there is! It looks like somebody took and insulation gun and sprayed our houses down, roofs and all. I had ducting, pieces of metal buildings, photographs, pieces of computers, tar paper, shingles, millions of splinters from all the wood, insulation in the trees, anything that would be in a house is in everybody's yards. I can't tell you how LUCKY we were. I think a lot of it was that my neighbor to the north blocked a lot of the wind and stuff from me because he has a 2 story house and a lot of big trees, which by the way, out of all of his trees it took the biggest one and completely uprooted it and left the others alone, that was pretty crazy too. My neighbor who I was with initially had the same thing happen to his shed, it was picked up and thrown into another neighbors yard and everything inside was in it's place. He also lost his above ground pool and deck. The adjuster was here today and he said structurally the house looks OK and the roof is OK. Getting reimbursed for the fence, shed, back screens, whirlybird on the roof and stove pipe. The volunteers have been incredible! The Red Cross people are so nice and willing to help. Total strangers stopping by to offer food, help cleaning, it's unbelievable how nice everybody is. More food and water that anyone could want, car phone chargers, everything, they pretty much have it covered. The looting has been minimal. I slept on my couch the first 2 nights with my shotgun just in case. The tornado was Monday, we got water back tues night, electric wed night and T.V. phone and internet sunday night. The devastation is UNBELIEVABLE unless you see it in person, this has been an overwhelmingly emotional week for us. The elementary school was the hardest thing for me personally. Anytime children are involved it's hard. Some people are still without power. You can go to the railroad tracks behind the house and walk down to where it crossed and look east and west and it looks like somebody took a bulldozer and cleared a path. You can also look on the ground where there is just grass and see exactly where it tracked. There are cars and trucks that are unrecognizable and nobody knows where they came from. Well that's the long and short of it! Again, WE really appreciate the concern, even you hobo. Hopefully I'll never go through that again! Take care all and have a great summer.