Jolt Country

[youtube][/youtube]

This was shot about five miles from my place yesterday. This one touched down a couple of miles west of my neighborhood, went back up into the air, and touched back down about five miles east of me.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, God hates trailer parks and churches, and you don't want to be in either one during tornado season. Also from yesterday:

The kids in the elementary school getting killed took the fun out of that one. :/

I wrote this for another forum but I'll post it here as well.

---

For those of you who don't know, I live in Oklahoma. I live in Yukon and work in Oklahoma City. Last Sunday, tornadoes touched down within a couple of miles of my house. The devastating tornado that hit Moore Monday afternoon is about five miles from where I work. We were lucky (again) in that none of my family or friends were directly affected by the storm's damage.

That being said, this week has kind of been a blur.

Over the past few days at work I've heard of at least four co-workers who lost their homes. I also learned that a lady that worked in my building died. She was one of the people that shelter in a 7-11 freezer and was killed. (What we all discovered is that 7-11 freezers are made out of cinder blocks, not metal.) Statistically speaking this isn't all that surprising. Moore is 5-10 miles away from where I work and they are saying roughly 1,000 businesses and 12,000 homes were damaged or completely destroyed. Add to the mix that I work with approximately 6,000 people and the odds of knowing someone who was directly affected is pretty good, and the odds of knowing somebody who knows somebody who was affected is almost 100%.

When towns are decimated, the first thing that happens is the local police and/or the national guard come and set up a perimeter. This is to keep people safe and keep looters out. Howard (my friend and co-worker who sits next to me) lives in such an area. If they decide that the area is unsafe (gas leaks, etc) then they will try and coerce you to leave and then won't let you back in. If they decide it is safe, they will let you in and out as long as you have a driver's license on you with an address in that neighborhood. And even then, they set up a curfew of 9pm and if you leave, you don't come back in until (I think) 6am.

Volunteers and donations are unreal. I have heard of volunteers being turned away at some locations because there are too many at times. The big problem is several smaller towns and areas were hit on Sunday and Moore (a larger and more populated area) got hit on Monday so Moore is getting most of the attention and volunteers and the people in outlying areas are kind of like, um, hello? According to this morning's new there have been more than $70 million in private donations, most of those coming from local businesses and celebrities. Unfortunately, early estimates are that between 2 and 3 billion dollars worth of damage was done. People have donated water and Gatorade and work gloves and bug spray in astounding amounts -- literally, semi-trailers full of items have arrived. What they need most right now is manpower; people to unload trucks and sort items and pick up rubble. My wife, kids and I plan on spending the weekend doing just that.

Last night was the first night that programming returned to normal. Up until yesterday it has just been tornado coverage on both television and the radio 24/7. You do hit a certain saturation point where it feels like reporters are just repeating the same things over and over until a new video clip or survivor story comes along. There's also a fine line between reporting the news and running up to someone who just lost everything they own, shove a microphone in their face and say, "So how do you feel?"

I am very glad the death toll ended up being lower than what they were originally reporting. Original reports had numbers as high as 91 but that number has dropped to 24. The toughest pill to swallow is of course that elementary school that got hit, where around 10 school kids were killed. Of course as each person's story makes the news, they are all sad.

My wife and I have donated money and water so far and are signed up to go help load/unload trucks and clean up this weekend. I also just heard on the news that the Moore library is looking for volunteer IT people to help recover data from recovered laptops and computers, so I may go do that this weekend as well. There are also efforts to reunite people with their photographs and things. People in Tulsa are finding papers and photographs that came from Edmond, about 120 miles away.

I have to admit that the continual footage of destruction and talk of impending funerals for children has been somewhat overwhelming and depressing, and I have found myself hugging my kids more than writing articles over the past few days. I'm giving myself until after Memorial Day, at which point I'm drawing a line in the sand and "climbing back on the ol' horse," so to speak and getting back to normalcy.

How's that all goin', then?

I thought the cold northeast winters were bad. Fuuuuck! Ever feel like it's only a matter of time? That would keep me from sleeping every night.

pinback wrote:How's that all goin', then?

It's been a little sobering.