Monster Tornado

 

 

May 23, 2013 will long be remembered in Moore, Oklahoma as the day when 17 square miles of this city were blown apart by a Force 5 Tornado packing winds of up to 200 miles an hour.

 

The devastation was a mile wide and nearly 17 miles long. “It is amazing anyone survived this,” the Mayor said. Twenty four didn’t including nine children seven of whom perished in an older elementary school which was completely destroyed. Hundreds of people were injured.

 

But scores of children and their teachers did emerge from the wreckage of Plaza Tower Elementary. Several teachers were lying on top of numerous small children as the horrific winds tore through the school.

 

First responders, digging with their hands, were pulling children from the wreckage and handing them to arriving parents and friends who formed a makeshift bucket brigade.

 

One dazed teacher standing outside the debris told a television reporter, “I laid on top of four children huddled in a bathroom. One boy said, ‘are we going to die with you today.’ I shouted "No one is going to die.”

 

She paused and told her interviewer, “I did something I guess I’m not suppose to do as a teacher, I prayed-Lord don’t take these children today.”

 

Nurses at one hospital in the path of the tornado delayed labor for one expectant mother and stayed with her throughout the storm. They transferred her to an undamaged hospital where she safely delivered an eight-pound boy.

 

The medical staff immediately nicknamed the baby Twister. But his grateful mother had the last word and called him Emanuel, which means God with us.

 

From media reports

Moore, Ok.