MOORE, Okla. — The deadliest tornado season in 75 years has thus far spared Moore, Okla. But as they still hold the unfortunate distinction of suffering more twisters than any other American town in recorded history, residents here are collectively holding their breath.
Situated less than 15 miles south of Oklahoma City, Moore is the kind of prairie-hardened community where elementary school children read weather radar like pros, and where you can set your watch by the weekly tornado siren tests that shriek for two minutes every Saturday. Nearly everyone claims a talent for being able to “feel” when tornadoes are brewing and few are the folks who don’t keep itemized inventories of household goods as if they were cataloging the Smithsonian.
Johnny Clark, a 41-year-old educator who has lost not just one, but two homes to twisters, simply shrugs off the downside of living in Tornado Alley.
“You learn not to get so attached to stuff,” he said.
Still, the 2011 tornado season has been unsettling. People here watched April storms tear up six Deep South states and devour much of Tuscaloosa, Ala. Two days after the May 22 pummeling of Joplin, Mo., the worst recorded single twister in U.S. history, some here became uncharacteristically unglued as a powerful tornado took dead aim on Moore.
“Everybody was on edge,” said Stephen Eddy, the Moore city manager. “There were traffic jams and a lady was killed in a traffic accident on the way home. It was panic and chaos.”
The tornado fizzled outside the city limits, although others in the state were not so lucky. An outbreak of tornadoes that swept through seven Oklahoma counties that day killed 11 and destroyed 493 homes and businesses.
“We were all sitting here with our heads down, going, ‘Oh, boy, here we go again,’” said Gayland Kitch, the city’s emergency services director, who oversees Moore’s response to natural disasters. “We sounded the sirens four times, and then it was over.”
16 strikes
The main ingredients of tornadoes — warm, wet air from the Gulf of Mexico and dry arctic air flowing over the Rockies — combine easily here in the Oklahoma City metropolitan area, which includes Moore.
There are only some 1,300 tornadoes that form annually in the United States, according to the National Weather Service, but the tornado map of the Oklahoma City region looks like a plate of spaghetti, with tornado tracks crisscrossing each other, adding up to more than 140 hits since the capital city was founded in the Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889.
Moore, a city just 25 miles square, has the majority of those hits, with 16. Six of those tornado strikes have occurred since 1998. Those include a triple hit on May 10, 2010, and two of the most violent storms ever to blow through the Great Plains: an F-4 in 2003 and a top-of-the-chart F-5 twister in 1999. The F-5 was part of a 66-tornado outbreak across four states that killed 42 in Oklahoma, five of them in Moore.
The 1999 “Big One” clocked winds of more than 300 mph in Moore, destroying 600 houses and businesses, an elementary school and two churches.
The 2003 tornado ate up another 200 homes and an assortment of restaurants and stores.
The “Why Moore?” questions run the gamut from God’s hand to global warming.
“I do believe God’s hand is in tornadoes, but I don’t think he’s punishing us,” Eddy said. “Moore is not a bad place. It just got hit.”
A few miles down the interstate at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Harold Brooks is a research meteorologist who studies the randomness of tornadoes. He cautions against the tendency to find patterns where none exist. Moore’s run of bad luck means nothing more than that.
“Just because I make a hole in one doesn’t mean I’m suddenly a good golfer,” he said.
Rebirth
After 1999’s disaster, about half the affected homeowners in Moore rebuilt; the other half moved away.
“We lost 3,000 to 4,000 residents overnight,” Eddy, the city manager, said.
Yet, Eddy is among those who consider the tornadoes a turning point that fueled a building boom and helped Moore come back stronger than ever. The only signs of the devastation that remain are a handful of empty foundation slabs.
“In 1999, the cleanup looked insurmountable, and that must be what Joplin is thinking now,” Eddy said. “But it happened in May and by July, it was gone. That’s the biggest issue you face. You need to be really good friends with FEMA. They make the rules and they have the green.”
Highland Park, a tree-lined neighborhood of sturdy one-story brick homes, took direct hits in both 1999 and 2003. Janie Milum, 62, a retired school administrator and member of the Moore city council since 2003, escaped the 1999 tornado without damage to her house, but got hit in 2003. Her then-85-year-old mother, who lives six blocks away, was not so lucky during the 1999 storm — her house was destroyed.
“You want to just walk away, but you get out there and dig through the rubble,” Milum said. She found her father’s rings, including his wedding band.
Clark, the educator, moved to Highland Park after the apartment complex where he lived in 1999 was reduced to kindling.
“I figured there’s no way it would happen a second time,” he said.
It did in 2003. The Highland Park house was totaled. Today, he and his wife, Julie, live with their three children in a house in a new subdivision on the west side of town. It’s a better house that Julie considers a bonus.
Clark learned the hard way about record-keeping for insurance claims. In the new house, he videotaped every room. He keeps an Excel spreadsheet updated with new purchases. This fall, when they buy new school clothes for the kids, they’ll be added to the list. Not only the kind of clothes, but also the brand. The receipts will go into a box.
“You document everything,” he said. “You want to get this specific — down to the kind of toothpaste you use.”
He also installed an underground shelter in his backyard. FEMA paid two-thirds of the cost.
“OK, the house may be gone when we come out,” he said. “But we’ll be OK. And we can rebuild.”
Laura.Parker@thedaily.com
Situated less than 15 miles south of Oklahoma City, Moore is the kind of prairie-hardened community where elementary school children read weather radar like pros, and where you can set your watch by the weekly tornado siren tests that shriek for two minutes every Saturday. Nearly everyone claims a talent for being able to “feel” when tornadoes are brewing and few are the folks who don’t keep itemized inventories of household goods as if they were cataloging the Smithsonian.
Johnny Clark, a 41-year-old educator who has lost not just one, but two homes to twisters, simply shrugs off the downside of living in Tornado Alley.
“You learn not to get so attached to stuff,” he said.
Still, the 2011 tornado season has been unsettling. People here watched April storms tear up six Deep South states and devour much of Tuscaloosa, Ala. Two days after the May 22 pummeling of Joplin, Mo., the worst recorded single twister in U.S. history, some here became uncharacteristically unglued as a powerful tornado took dead aim on Moore.
“Everybody was on edge,” said Stephen Eddy, the Moore city manager. “There were traffic jams and a lady was killed in a traffic accident on the way home. It was panic and chaos.”
The tornado fizzled outside the city limits, although others in the state were not so lucky. An outbreak of tornadoes that swept through seven Oklahoma counties that day killed 11 and destroyed 493 homes and businesses.
“We were all sitting here with our heads down, going, ‘Oh, boy, here we go again,’” said Gayland Kitch, the city’s emergency services director, who oversees Moore’s response to natural disasters. “We sounded the sirens four times, and then it was over.”
16 strikes
The main ingredients of tornadoes — warm, wet air from the Gulf of Mexico and dry arctic air flowing over the Rockies — combine easily here in the Oklahoma City metropolitan area, which includes Moore.
There are only some 1,300 tornadoes that form annually in the United States, according to the National Weather Service, but the tornado map of the Oklahoma City region looks like a plate of spaghetti, with tornado tracks crisscrossing each other, adding up to more than 140 hits since the capital city was founded in the Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889.
Moore, a city just 25 miles square, has the majority of those hits, with 16. Six of those tornado strikes have occurred since 1998. Those include a triple hit on May 10, 2010, and two of the most violent storms ever to blow through the Great Plains: an F-4 in 2003 and a top-of-the-chart F-5 twister in 1999. The F-5 was part of a 66-tornado outbreak across four states that killed 42 in Oklahoma, five of them in Moore.
The 1999 “Big One” clocked winds of more than 300 mph in Moore, destroying 600 houses and businesses, an elementary school and two churches.
The 2003 tornado ate up another 200 homes and an assortment of restaurants and stores.
The “Why Moore?” questions run the gamut from God’s hand to global warming.
“I do believe God’s hand is in tornadoes, but I don’t think he’s punishing us,” Eddy said. “Moore is not a bad place. It just got hit.”
A few miles down the interstate at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Harold Brooks is a research meteorologist who studies the randomness of tornadoes. He cautions against the tendency to find patterns where none exist. Moore’s run of bad luck means nothing more than that.
“Just because I make a hole in one doesn’t mean I’m suddenly a good golfer,” he said.
Rebirth
After 1999’s disaster, about half the affected homeowners in Moore rebuilt; the other half moved away.
“We lost 3,000 to 4,000 residents overnight,” Eddy, the city manager, said.
Yet, Eddy is among those who consider the tornadoes a turning point that fueled a building boom and helped Moore come back stronger than ever. The only signs of the devastation that remain are a handful of empty foundation slabs.
“In 1999, the cleanup looked insurmountable, and that must be what Joplin is thinking now,” Eddy said. “But it happened in May and by July, it was gone. That’s the biggest issue you face. You need to be really good friends with FEMA. They make the rules and they have the green.”
Highland Park, a tree-lined neighborhood of sturdy one-story brick homes, took direct hits in both 1999 and 2003. Janie Milum, 62, a retired school administrator and member of the Moore city council since 2003, escaped the 1999 tornado without damage to her house, but got hit in 2003. Her then-85-year-old mother, who lives six blocks away, was not so lucky during the 1999 storm — her house was destroyed.
“You want to just walk away, but you get out there and dig through the rubble,” Milum said. She found her father’s rings, including his wedding band.
Clark, the educator, moved to Highland Park after the apartment complex where he lived in 1999 was reduced to kindling.
“I figured there’s no way it would happen a second time,” he said.
It did in 2003. The Highland Park house was totaled. Today, he and his wife, Julie, live with their three children in a house in a new subdivision on the west side of town. It’s a better house that Julie considers a bonus.
Clark learned the hard way about record-keeping for insurance claims. In the new house, he videotaped every room. He keeps an Excel spreadsheet updated with new purchases. This fall, when they buy new school clothes for the kids, they’ll be added to the list. Not only the kind of clothes, but also the brand. The receipts will go into a box.
“You document everything,” he said. “You want to get this specific — down to the kind of toothpaste you use.”
He also installed an underground shelter in his backyard. FEMA paid two-thirds of the cost.
“OK, the house may be gone when we come out,” he said. “But we’ll be OK. And we can rebuild.”
Laura.Parker@thedaily.com
