The Mercy of the Sky: The Story of a Tornado (25 page)

The only thing nagging at Eddy was the unknown of how many people the storm had taken. All night he’d heard different numbers—as low as ten, as high as seventy. The rumors of what had happened at Plaza Towers were especially unsettling. At one point he’d heard fifty-one kids were dead. As he prepared to go home for the night, a new number hit the news wires: as many as ninety-one dead in Moore, according to the medical examiner’s office, including twenty kids. Even as he felt it was his job to be a rock for his city, Eddy couldn’t help but feel a wave of despair. He knew his city could physically rebuild, but he wondered if Moore could survive the emotional blow of having lost so many children.

 • • • 

At the church Simpson watched as Poe and other local police officials went into the rooms and talked to the parents. She thought they were finally being told the terrible news of what had happened at the school. But around 1:30
A.M.
the families were sent home with the news that authorities would know more in the morning about the fate of their kids. Simpson could not believe they were still being forced to wait. It made no sense to her.

On the way home she and Lindy drove past massive areas of destruction, including the demolished Moore Medical Center and the collapsed neighborhoods off Interstate 35. She stared out the window, lost in thought, thinking of how happily the day had started and how horribly it was ending. She knew that she needed rest. But there was now so much to do. She had no idea if the families of the lost kids would need her, but she wanted to be there in case they did. She wanted to check on her injured teachers, including Doan. And then there was the question of what to do about graduation. That night, she knew she wouldn’t sleep. How could she after a day like this?

 • • • 

Twenty miles to the north Gary England was awake too. After hours at the station he was finally at home, but his mind was still going. He had already watched some of the coverage of that afternoon, weighing what he had done right and what he could have done better. Now he was at his computer, checking on the storm-projection maps and reading the headlines. As he finally padded down the hall to go to bed, his mind was dominated by the same haunting questions: How many people had died? Had he done everything he could have to save them?

S
earch teams worked throughout the night at Plaza Towers and in the devastated neighborhoods around Moore, desperately searching for signs of life in the destruction. Shortly after midnight it started to rain on and off and the air became muggy and thick, a sign that another storm was coming. This added a frantic edge to what by now most considered to be a recovery operation, though some still held out hope for miracles.

Down Interstate 35 in Norman, Rick Smith and the meteorologists at the National Weather Service had been up most of the night. While there had been a momentary reprieve right after the tornado hit, the bad weather had raged on to the south and east well into Tuesday morning. At 2:30
A.M.
, nearly twelve hours after the tornado developed, Oklahoma was finally free of severe-weather warnings, but it was only a brief reprieve. An hour later a new set of storms with high winds, large hail, and intense lightning erupted to the southwest of the Oklahoma City metro area—sparked by the same explosive combination that had fueled tornadoes the previous two days. While the forecast was not as dire—the likelihood of tornadoes was not high—any storm was sure to complicate the recovery effort.

Smith had finally gone home around 2:00
A.M
. He tried to sleep, but he tossed and turned in his bed, unable to stop thinking about what happened just a few miles up the road and what else Mother Nature might have up her sleeve in the coming days. By 5:00
A.M.
he was back at his computer anxiously checking the radar, which showed a line of intensifying storms coming very close to the tornado-ravaged parts of Moore. He thought about all the people who were caught outside—search-and-rescue workers, city employees, and residents who had camped out alongside the remains of their homes. Hundreds of journalists from all over the country had by then descended on the scene, including correspondents and producers from the major television networks, who had raced in to cover the unfolding disaster. The major cable news networks had been on air with live coverage from Moore for nearly fifteen hours straight, and with network morning shows about to go live for viewers on the East Coast, Smith began to worry that these out-of-state reporters, unfamiliar with the vagaries of Oklahoma weather, would be struck by lightning. He especially worried about reporters standing near the satellite trucks with their antennas raised high. It was all about getting the best signal, but those antennas could easily be conduits for lightning, and that made Smith nervous. Knowing that many reporters followed him on Twitter, he quickly tapped out a message warning them of the possibility of an electrical storm. “Lightning is close to Moore!” he wrote. “Please be careful!!” It was 5:45
A.M
.

Smith wasn’t the only one who didn’t sleep well that night. The entire region was on edge, jittery and anxious as the city of Moore began to come to terms with the horror left behind. The reported number of dead and missing continued to vary wildly into early Tuesday morning, complicated in part by the chaotic atmosphere at the state medical examiner’s office, which struggled to keep track of how many bodies had been recovered and processed and to separate them from the number of missing. For several hours, a spokeswoman continued to confirm for reporters that as many as ninety-one people were dead, but as the sun began to peek through the ominous clouds overhead in Moore, that number was revised down to fifty-one dead—including as many as twenty kids at Plaza Towers.

In Moore, Glenn Lewis, the mayor, stood near the remains of the hospital that had been destroyed and prepared go on air for the first of what would be at least fifty television interviews that day. While the state’s governor, Mary Fallin, had arrived on the scene with an entourage of staff and handlers, who managed her schedule and dealt with reporters, Lewis was alone. He went from camera to camera with little break in between, appearing before audiences around the world as the shell-shocked face of a city that had been so cruelly ravaged by yet another deadly tornado. How many were dead? How many were missing? How many were kids?

Lewis had few answers as he stared, almost stunned, into camera after camera, blinded by the bright glare of the lights that lit him up against the horrific backdrop of jagged lumber and piles of bricks that used to be houses and businesses. It wasn’t that he was holding back information. Even as the mayor, Lewis couldn’t get a straight answer on the death toll. Everybody he talked to had a different estimate—some high, some low.

All he could think about was the kids. Moore had made it through the May 3 tornado and others since, but the town had never lost children like this before. It was unbearable to think of, and Lewis, who was known for his calm, steady leadership, struggled to keep his emotions in check. When a reporter asked him how he was feeling, he choked up. “My city has been blown to hell,” he said.

 • • • 

Amy Simpson had been up well before dawn—she barely slept at all that night. Once or twice she’d drifted off, only to awaken just as quickly. Had it all been some terrible nightmare? She so desperately wished to believe it was so, but this was no dream. Seven of her students were gone, and every time she shut her eyes she saw the anguished looks on the faces of their parents, standing outside the rubble of her leveled school, anxiously trying to find their children. Nobody should have to endure such pain, and it killed her as a mother to think of what they must be going through. Finally she gave up and crawled out of bed.

School administrators had scheduled an 8:30
A.M.
meeting of principals across the district to figure out how to handle the last few days of the school year. Simpson knew she didn’t have to be there, but she didn’t once consider skipping it. She wanted to know what was happening, to be an active participant. Given the massive destruction, kids probably wouldn’t go back to class—especially at Briarwood or Plaza Towers. But to end the year on such a horrible note seemed wrong, and Simpson wondered if it wouldn’t be good for her students and teachers to meet one last time to say good-bye for the year, to establish some sense of normalcy in a situation that was anything but.

She contemplated this as she walked around her house in a fog. Her two kids, Scarlet and Roarke, were still at her parents’ house a few miles away in Norman, and she and Lindy had agreed to go there first thing in the morning to pick them up. Already she was starting to feel the early tinges of survivor guilt that would come to haunt her and many others who had walked away from the destruction at Plaza Towers. On Monday afternoon, as she’d stood outside the pile of rubble that used to be the second- and third-grade classrooms, her phone had rung. It was her twelve-year-old son, who was crying and scared. Her parents had driven with the kids over to the east side of town, a few blocks off Fourth Street, where her grandparents lived. The house had been narrowly missed by the tornado, and they’d been forced to park their car some distance away and walk in to pick her grandparents up, because the roads were blocked by debris.

Waiting in the car, Roarke had gotten scared, and he’d called his mother’s cell phone in a panic, wondering if something had happened to his grandparents. He didn’t yet know the full scale of what had happened to his mother’s school and how close he came to losing her. His call had come while Simpson was trying to help parents at Plaza Towers reunite with their kids and to figure out how many children were missing. “You’re okay. You’re okay,” she had said again and again, trying to soothe him. “You’re alive! You’re okay. I love you!” The call had ended when he finally saw his grandparents coming down the street, and Simpson told him that she had to go. But afterward, as she stood with the anguished parents of the missing kids at Plaza, she was plagued by guilt. Had she been too short with her son? Had she told him she loved him enough? Why had God spared her when so many other families were hurting?

In her heart she knew there would never be an answer. When she arrived at her parents’ house that morning, she ran and hugged the kids, embracing them tight, as tight as she could ever remember, trying to feel only gratitude and not guilt. Still, as her kids and parents cried in happiness—her mother, especially, who had been terrified that the tornado had ripped the family apart—Simpson maintained a brave face. She worried that even one stray tear would cause her to fall apart. And there was no time for that, not now.

 • • • 

The Simpsons’ house, just south of Nineteenth Street, still had power, unlike many in Moore, but the entire town was without water, so she quickly jumped into the shower at her parents’ house in Norman and dressed. She borrowed her mother’s car (hers had been destroyed by the tornado) while Lindy took the kids back home, and she drove back toward Moore, navigating the back roads on the east side of town so that she could make it to the staff meeting. Interstate 35 had been reopened, but it was backed up for miles in both directions, in part by gawkers who had come to see the tornado damage. Above, the sky was just as crowded. Helicopters from the local television stations and the National Guard hovered in the air alongside choppers ferrying packs of news photographers, who shot wide-angle aerial photos of the milewide path of devastation. They raced to get as much footage as possible as the clouds grew thick and black, signaling the threat of yet another storm.

Robert Romines had set up shop in the cafeteria at Moore High School, a few blocks north and west of the old administration building, which had been destroyed by the tornado. Moore High was just outside the path of the storm, and it would serve as the temporary headquarters of the district staff for months as officials laid out plans to rebuild their own offices as well as the damaged schools. Most of the computers and vital records dating back decades had been destroyed by the storm. Not only were student records lost but also purchase orders for textbooks and equipment for the upcoming school year. Some records would eventually be salvaged, but many wouldn’t. Moore had one of the largest school districts in the state, with more than 23,000 kids, and it often felt like they were starting all over again.

As the staff gathered that Tuesday morning in the darkened cafeteria of the high school, which was still without power, many simply hugged one another and cried. They struggled to comprehend the loss of life and how they would move forward. News reports were still suggesting that dozens of kids were missing, but by then most people in the room knew there were just seven, but even that was too many. How would anything ever be normal again?

As Amy Simpson walked into the room, many of her colleagues turned and stared, stunned to see her there. One by one they lined up to embrace her, marveling at how calm and collected she appeared to be. But even as she hugged her fellow principals and administrators, Simpson’s mind was on the parents of the kids who were lost. What were they doing? Did they know? Were they okay? She was operating under the assumption that the families were at the First Baptist Church, where they had been the night before, and she told Susie Pierce that she wanted to be there when the parents were told what had happened to their kids. Simpson knew she couldn’t bring them back or change their feelings of loss and pain, but she wanted to be there just in case they needed her, to grieve with them. Pierce told her it was probably best if she wasn’t there—that the job of informing and consoling the parents should be left to the chaplain and members of the church, who were better experienced at dealing with traumatic loss. Simpson had little choice but to agree.

As the meeting got under way, she sat there listening to Pierce, Romines, and other colleagues brainstorming about how to proceed in coming days. The skies were dark again outside and suddenly she heard the whine of a siren. Her heart began to race. Was it all happening again? But as she glanced around the room, she saw that none of the other staff were reacting. The siren wailed again. Then she realized it was just the whistle of a freight train roaring down the tracks a few blocks away. It was a sound she’d heard almost every day for the last forty-three years of her life, but the bleat of the siren and the rumble of the train had evoked the horrifying memories of the tornado approaching the day before. Simpson had willed herself to be strong, but the wail of the train had somehow pierced the invisible armor that had enabled her to put her emotions aside. Only at that moment did she begin to realize how traumatized she was.

 • • • 

A mile to the west Moore police had relaxed some of the restrictions around the neighborhoods blasted apart by the tornado, allowing residents to begin to salvage what they could from their battered homes. Some came armed with bright blue tarps, which they scrambled to drape over ripped-off sections of roofs or windows that had been blown out. It was a race against the elements as the wind whipped up and it began to rain again. Some simply stood in front of their devastated homes and stared, wondering how they would even begin to rebuild their lives.

Just south of Fourth Street near Broadway, seventy-four-year-old Barbara Garcia was back in front of her house. Her arms were covered in splotchy red marks, bloody scrapes that she’d incurred as she was picked up in her bathroom and tossed around inside the tornado. While the local weathermen had warned that nobody could be above ground and survive, Garcia somehow had. Her house was a total loss, and she didn’t have insurance. But it was just stuff. All she wanted was her dog, Bowser. She hadn’t seen her tiny schnauzer since he’d been sucked from her arms that Monday afternoon. Garcia had stood outside her house in the hours after the storm calling his name to no avail. She knew he was probably dead, but he was all that mattered to her. That morning she found herself again standing in the midst of the destruction calling out his name.

A crew from CBS News happened upon her and interviewed her, asking her to describe what she’d been through. She was telling the reporter about her beloved little dog, who was probably lost to the storm, when a producer noticed a tiny movement under a large slab of collapsed wall and then a little black nose peeking out. “The dog! The dog!” she cried.