These were our next conversations:
Philip: “sirens going, 3:07 in Moore, You’ve got 20 minutes”
Me (2:47pm): At 4th and Broadway
Philip: Looks like it will pass near the house if it continues on same projector
Me: How do I watch the news on my phone like you were doing?
Philip: KOCO.COM click watch live
Me: Sirens Me (3:01PM): I’m so scared
Philip: Put mattress on top of you
Philip: Phone won’t go through
Me: Should I leave? (this message didn’t go through right away)
Me (3:18PM): Underground at neighbors (not delivered)
Me: Think the kids r ok? (not delivered)
Philip: No Philip: Stay hunkered down
Me(3:30PM): Underground
Philip: No time
Philip: Love you
Philip: I’ll be right there after
Me: Is it past us? (not delivered)
Me: Safe? (not delivered)
Philip: great (I think this was to my underground text)
Philip (3:45PM): Headed that way… traffic awful
Philip: School destroyed near Raegan
Me: Will u please call all about kids (raegan’s daycare)
Philip: Where r u
Philip: I’ll pick you up and we can go get them
Philip: I can’t get through to anyone from my cell
Me: Home
Me: More coming?
Philp: K, I’m trying to get there
Me (4:00PM): U don’t have to come get me
Philip: can you get my usb plug
Philip: I want to get you so we can go get our babies
I was barefoot and still wearing work clothes (slacks and a sweater) and thinking another tornado may be on the way I changed clothes (in the dark) trying to find something that wouldn’t be so hot to wear in the shelter next time. I packed a bag with an extra set of clothes and tennis shoes for Philip and Raegan, an extra outfit for Cameron, two granola bars, a banana and a thermos of ice water. I also threw my wallet and the garage puncher into the diaper bag.
When Philip pulled up, I was standing in our front yard talking to our neighbor, Tony, and his 14 month old son, Tate, talking about how he got Tate out of daycare and brought him home so they could get in the shelter and that his wife Sarah was up at the District attorney’s office in OKC. Philip and I left thinking there might be a lot of traffic but were not prepared for what we saw as we drove west down 19th street. Besides crazy amounts of debris making I35 look like a dirt road, we saw a nearly empty Walmart parking lot, down power lines, lots of people walking, bumper to bumper traffic, many many emergency vehicles passing us, glass broken out of car and building windows, then buildings gone. Tears started flowing down my face and I noticed that every person we saw was either crying or smoking. My chiropractor’s office was demolished and unrecognizable. We realized quickly we weren’t going to be able to drive to Raegan’s school so we made a decision to park in an apartment parking lot on 19th as the CVS at the corner of Santa Fe and 19th looked full. I told Philip to park anywhere because I was in such a hurry to go get Raegan. I didn’t want to carry the larger bag with extra clothes from 19th to Raegan’s school (about 7 blocks) so I threw Raegan’s tennis shoes and socks in the diaper bag and a banana and we joined hands and started our trek.
We walked through the cars basically parked on 19th St. then across a down power line in a puddle of water from the rain and broken fire hydrants spewing water everywhere, across the back side of Walgreens, then in front of what used to be Dollar General, then all we could see ahead was debris, the most I saw standing was part of a kitchen wall with a refrigerator and not 5 feet from it a red washer and dryer sitting side-by-side. I think it was about that point when the thought that we may have lost Raegan and Philip cried out and almost fell down and I grabbed his arm and said “Philip you have to be strong and be careful I can’t have you getting hurt too on top of all this.”
We tried running but it was too hard with all the debris we were tripping over; Philip had to help me over some of the poles lying across the road; one wood one looked like a fallen over redwood tree it was so large. We smelt gas and although there were fires, we had heard they were not putting them out because they were focusing on search and rescue first. We could see all the emergency vehicles and military tanks sitting in front of Raegan’s school but we weren’t seeing any children. My heart sank deeper and tears streamed heavier. Then Philip saw a house standing and said, “look that house is standing, that’s a good sign Tara.” Then I saw Baleigh, a little girl in Raegan’s classroom, and her grandfather, who I had met at recent birthday parties this Spring. I yelled out her name and then ran and gave her a hug and told her I was so glad she was okay and kissed the top of her head and her grandfather assured me that they were all okay. It wasn’t too much further until we reached Raegan’s daycare where some of the teachers were out talking to parents and assuring us the children were okay, the babies were only in their diapers and in cribs outside so that they didn’t overheat as the building had lost power. We walked down the hallway, I hugged the owner of the school who we had just visited with at Home Depot the day before, then went straight to Raegan’s classroom and picked her up and squeezed her SO tight and gave her teacher, Alicia, a hug too without even putting Raegan down. The director also let us know that the children just thought they were in the safe room (which Raegan calls the hiding place) because of the rain and hail and they hadn’t heard the “Tornado” word yet. So as you can imagine, Raegan was quite shocked at what she saw when we walked out of her daycare. Our plan was to go back to Philip’s car and go pick up Cameron, who we already knew was safe at his daycare. However we were told we were not allowed to go back that way (south) because of a gas leak. Philip wanted to try cutting through one of the destroyed neighborhoods to get back to our car, but I reminded him it was too dangerous and we just needed to go get Cameron. One of Raegan’s first comments was “that’s not suppose to be there” talking about a car in the grass. While we walked we saw horrible things and stepped through dangerous things really without thinking too much about it, maybe it was just shock, and we were in survival mode. All that mattered to me was getting to Cameron. Cameron’s school is a little over 3 miles northwest from Raegan’s school. Philip and I were both also texting while walking trying to answer people’s questions, let them know we were okay, and trying to find someone who could come get us so we could get Cameron and get home. There were many, many other people walking. People who saw us with Raegan and asked where we got her from trying to figure out if their child(ren) were okay just as we had been minutes before. People walking without shoes. People videoing the madness with their phones. A group that consisted of two teachers and 8-12 kids from Plaza Towers elementary. One of the teachers had a bloody scrape on her leg, her arm wrapped up in a swaddle blanket and her shirt torn. The children were covered with debris like many of the cars we had seen earlier; they had debris in their eyelashes and around their nostrils. The teachers kept recounting them and making sure they were staying together as they were trying to get to a triage center. I remember one girl telling another one that her bra strap was showing and the girl saying “thanks, but I’m not really worried about that right now.” The children weren’t crying. I think they were more in a state of shock. I’ve never seen a warzone, but I felt like I was in a third world country and all that mattered to me was getting to my child. I saw one lady walking without shoes and asked her if she was okay, she said yes and showed me that she was carrying her shoes in her hand. I didn’t see her again until Philip, Raegan and I were past GFF foods on 12th St. when I saw that same lady’s face in the passenger seat of a truck and she asked if we needed a ride. Her husband had driven down to come pick her up and luckily she remembered me, so they kindly gave us a ride to Cameron’s daycare. She worked in the Fox & Fields pediatricians’ office in the Moore Medical Center and told us she had been underground in the Chapel when the tornado came through, she said when she came out afterwards it looked like the area had been hit by a bomb. She also told us she had a 9 year old daughter named Reagan who was with a relative. They dropped us off at the daycare and after Raegan and I went to the bathroom, I nursed Cameron, we got 3 small bottles of water and then rode in Angela’s (daycare owner) vehicle to try to get closer to home. Since our neighborhood had little damage, I hadn’t considered the possibility of the east side of I-35 having damage as well. We asked Angela if she could just take us down Eastern and then we could get home, but traffic was horrible and police officers wouldn’t let us south of Main St. So we slowly took Main street east all the way to Bryant, it took forever as I-35 was shut down even semi trucks were making their way through this little neighborhood to try and find a way south. Angela lives in Edmond and has young children of her own so we asked her to just let us out at Main St and Bryant and we planned on just walking through Veteran’s Park to get home. We walk from our house to Veteran’s Park to go play normally anyways, so it wouldn’t be so bad even though this time we didn’t have a stroller and Philip was carrying Cameron and his heavy carseat carrier. We set off on foot and were then stopped by a National Guard member 2 blocks later and were told they were not allowing anyone to go south. So we just kept walking we turned back west and walked down Main street until I saw a familiar face in a driveway. It was our neighbor, Sarah Butler. (Glad I’m on the HOA welcoming committee, because this is how I first met Sarah.) However as Sarah lives on our block, I had just been in the front yard speaking to her husband right after the tornado has passed. It was so nice to see a familiar face and sit down for a minute. Sarah was in this driveway because her husband is a youth pastor and one of the students, Brooke, from their church lived there. Sarah worked downtown and had been trying to get home but wasn’t able to go any further south so she too was stuck, but she had her vehicle unlike us. Although they didn’t have power, Brooke’s mother was friendly and let me use her restroom and even brought Raegan out some animal crackers. We sat in their driveway for awhile, along with John, another member from their church who had been walking along and decided to stop at Brooke’s house as he couldn’t get home either. They were all trying to charge their phones in an SUV and the battery of the SUV died, so Sarah found jumper cables in her car and let them borrow them to jump start the battery of the SUV. Mine and Philip’s phones were nearly dead but we couldn’t get much service anyways. We saw a friend who owns a tow trucking business drive by Brooke’s house and I had Philip chase him down to see if he could perhaps get us past the guards so we could go home. Philip tried but our friend thought we were crazy, for he had seen the damage and knew that would be impossible. It started to get dark and traffic seemed to have lightened up so Sarah, John, Philip, Raegan, Cameron and I decided to head west in Sarah’s 5 passenger car to try to get home. We first drove as far west as we could seeing every single road blocked off so we couldn’t go south. Cameron was crying and Sarah looked back at me and said do you nurse? I told her yes and she said she didn’t mind and her and John wouldn’t look back if I need to nurse Cameron. Cameron was sitting in her Sarah’s son’s carseat facing backwards and I was able to lean forward with Raegan half in my lap and nurse him to calm him down. We reached I44 and realized we wouldn’t be able to go south so we turned around the headed north to I240 and went east. We were really hungry so we planned on stopping by Chick-fil-A to get dinner but it was closed and the McDonalds next to it had a line that looked a mile long. We found a drive thru long john silvers/rootbeer place but sat in the drivethru line for over 10 minutes and didn’t move so we decided, eating wasn’t that important, even though Raegan kept telling me how thirsty she was. We got back on I240 and drove east to Sooner Road, we thought for sure that would be far enough east to get home, but as we were quickly met with lots more traffic and saw vehicles turning around we realized we weren’t going to be able to get home that night and started making other plans. I thought of our friends who live off 89th on the east side of I35 and knew they wouldn’t mind us dropping in late at night, but we had already passed 89th, so Sarah thought of her husband’s grandparents who live off 27th St. We pulled into their driveway with no advanced notice and they welcomed us into their home. They had power and we saw the first glimpses of media coverage from the storm, they were talking about the death toll, it wasn’t pretty. Luckily Raegan was distracted by their yorkie, named Bridgette. We tried to explain to Sarah’s inlaws how we all came together and ended up at their house and they explained where we could sleep for the night and also started making sandwiches and warming up pizza for us. It must have been after 11pm when we ate dinner, but we were so thankful we didn’t have to go to bed hungry. Sarah slept in a bed room with a twin bed and trundle with me and my children and Philip and John slept in the living room. Although I was so tired, I didn’t sleep. I could hear thunder and see lightning flashes coming through the window most the night. I listened for tornado sirens, just in case. The scenes from earlier in the day kept running through my mind and tears kept streaming quietly down my face as I held Cameron tight and combed Raegan’s hair off her forehead with my hand. At 5:30AM I heard an alarm going off in another room, we had decided that we wanted to try and leave early in the morning to get home before any traffic was on the roads. So I woke Sarah up and she turned on the tv so we could check the news and start getting ready to go. We thanked Sarah’s inlaws for letting us stay with them and packed back into Sarah’s car. I think we were able to go down 27th St to I35 south, but I don’t really remember exactly. We definitely were not able to exit on our normal exit but went further south and then up around a backway that Philip knew and got to Eastern and 19th where at least 4 national guards were standing. We showed them our identification and gave them our sob story and they let us turn right we were so excited to almost be home. We walked through our front door and the house smelt awful. Our power was still off and the dishes from Sunday night were still sitting in the kitchen sink, but that wasn’t my priority. Philip needed to get to work, so he changed shirts and was worried about it being wrinkled as he normally irons every morning. I told him it was fine and they would understand (I later learned he took it to a place in Norman and they asked if he was from Moore and pressed it for him for free before work.) I got a bag of cereal snacks and a jar of peanut butter (you know the essentials) as well as some diapers. Philip dropped Raegan, Cameron and I off at our friends’ home on his way to work. Our friends in Norman had lost power but had a generator running. They got power back on just as we pulled into their driveway. The map below shows how close Raegan’s daycare (A) was to Plaza Towers Elementary. I haven’t seen all the damaged areas in Moore, but I believe the path Philip and I had to walk through from 19th St to Raegan’s daycare was the hardest hit area.
Posts
