The Mercy of the Sky: The Story of a Tornado

by Holly Bailey

  Though it had decreased in speed, going from about 40 miles per hour to about 15 or 20, the tornado became stronger than ever, as if eating away at the life of a city was somehow fueling its brutality. By now its winds and rotation were so demonic that entire lawns were vacuumed away in seconds. The ground underneath was scoured so clean of loose dirt that the vortex began to leave deep scars that resembled crop circles indented in the earth.

  Every tree within reach of its fierce winds was shorn of its leaves and limbs—and in some cases its bark. Giant, leafy oak trees that had withstood storms for years were quickly carved down to jagged little stumps. Entire homes were swept from their slabs in seconds, the debris chopped and chewed into fragments.

  Even with all the attention paid to them in recent years, tornadoes were still a mysterious phenomenon—and this one was no different. As it neared Santa Fe Avenue, houses on some blocks were inhaled and then redeposited in neat, uniform rows like loose hay swept up in a farm field ready to be harvested into bales. It was as if the storm suddenly felt the need to be polite and to organize its mess. Scientists were at a loss to explain why or how it did this. Nobody got close enough to see firsthand because it was simply too dangerous.

  But they knew enough to know that windrowing, as it was referred to, happened only when tornadoes were at their most fierce, with winds of at least 200 miles per hour. According to the radar, the winds inside this storm were now hitting around 210 miles per hour as it pounded the neighborhood around Briarwood, though they were probably far stronger. Given its distance, the Doppler radar could only calculate the winds at the top of the storm, and in the rare instances when scientists had been able to get close enough to a vortex to measure its exact wind speed, they had often found the gusts closer to the ground to be much stronger and more violent.

  Nobody could get close enough to really know precisely how bad the winds were. Like many of the teams of professional chasers, most of the scientists who fan out to study the storms that regularly erupt during the Oklahoma springtime had headed south, believing the likelihood of tornadoes was stronger in that direction. Now some of these, like Howard Bluestein and his team of OU students, were racing back north, and even though they weren’t close enough to get a comprehensive read, the tornado heading toward Moore was so strong they were able to pull some limited ground data on it even from more than 60 miles away.

  But those in the immediate path of the tornado didn’t need an exact wind reading to understand how bad it was. They could hear it in the way the structure around them creaked ominously and feel how the ground trembled as the storm approached. And then, just as quickly, it was hell on earth as they were caught up in a whirling gyre that latched on to its victims and refused to let go.

  • • •

  At a house on Broadway Circle, a block from where Moore officially began, Shannon Quick was huddled in a dark closet with her mother-in-law, Joy; her two young boys, Jackson, eight, and Tanner, thirteen; and their plump bull terrier, Luke, when the tornado approached. As was true for many in the neighborhood, a storm shelter was an indulgence the family hadn’t been able to afford, and when it was too late to escape, they had taken cover in the only place they could—an interior closet. There was no reason to believe it wouldn’t protect them now.

  Shannon and her family were only hours away from leaving on vacation. They were going to Virginia, and she had checked out her boys early from school to pack. But now they were in the path of a tornado, and as the winds engulfed them, the house began to crumble like a cracker crushed in the ball of someone’s fist. In the closet the walls began to disintegrate around them—one wall went and then the other. The boys had been wearing their plastic Little League helmets—placed on their heads by their worried mother, who was heeding Gary England’s advice to gird the kids for battle against the storm. Suddenly the helmets were sucked from their heads, leaving them defenseless against the debris around them. And then, just as suddenly, they were all sucked up, catapulted through the air by the tornado for what seemed like an eternity before being viciously hurled back to the ground.

  An hour or so earlier, Shannon had been checking items off her to-do list before leaving town. Now she was sprawled on the ground near what used to be her house bleeding to death, the midsection of her body sliced fully open by something that had impaled her as she was tossed around by the tornado. Nearby Jackson lay almost motionless, his tiny body pulverized by the storm. The skin of his right buttock had been torn away; his pelvis was crushed and one of his legs broken. He was losing blood fast. Luke, his beloved dog, moaned and whimpered nearby, injured so badly he would have to be put to sleep.

  Shannon’s older son, Tanner, who had somehow escaped with only cuts and bruises, roused his grandmother, who was unconscious on the ground nearby. Joy, who was sixty-one, was seriously injured too. “Ma! Ma!” he cried, shaking her a bit. The boys had called her “Ma” since they were small, when they hadn’t been able to pronounce the word “Grandma.” She had a giant hole in her right arm where blood was gushing out, and one of her heels was crushed and broken. But seeing the panicked look on her grandson’s face, she found the strength to rise in spite of the pain and push herself up off the ground. She ran to her daughter-in-law, who kept repeating her boys’ names in a voice so faint Joy could barely hear her over the roar of the storm. “Tanner, Jackson, Tanner, Jackson,” she slowly whispered again and again, struggling to speak. The forty-year-old coughed and her voice began to gurgle as blood filled her lungs. “They are okay. They are okay,” Joy told her, trying to comfort her and keep her calm. “Just lie still.” Nearby Tanner sobbed as he looked at his mother, so badly injured. No child was supposed to see his parent like this.

  Joy stood up and frantically screamed for help. But there was nobody. They were in the middle of a wasteland, and the tornado was still so close that debris was floating in the air around them. She began to pray, calling out to God to keep her daughter-in-law alive until someone could help them. It didn’t seem right that Shannon, who lived to take care of her kids, wouldn’t see them grow up. It couldn’t be that she was being ripped out of their lives like this, in such a horrid, despicable way. A man, a paramedic, finally ran up, and Shannon grabbed his pant leg as he talked to her, trying to keep her alert until they could get her out of there. But her hand slowly went limp. She died right there on the ground, her face wet from the rain that began to fall in thick droplets from the sky.

  • • •

  The tornado was now such a monster that KFOR’s Jon Welsh, sitting a mile to the south and several thousand feet in the air, could hear the roar of the storm over the sound of his headset, which was designed to protect him from the high-frequency pitch of the engine of his helicopter. The storm was even louder than the helicopter, something that had never happened before.

  His wife had finally texted him to let him know she was in the shelter with their kids. Welsh was relieved, but his relief was only momentary. Before his eyes the storm was getting bigger and bigger. He knew he had to keep a mental distance from what was happening in order to maintain control—just as he had when he was operating in war zones overseas. But the tornado was so massive as it took aim at the most heavily populated parts of Moore that he could barely believe it. In his heart he knew that people were dying, and it made him feel sick. “This thing is not letting up,” he told Mike Morgan.

  On the KFOR radar the center of the tornado was now a huge black hole, representing the storm’s apocalyptic winds and massive quantity of debris. Between that and the ominous pictures from Welsh and his other chasers, Morgan kept thinking of May 3—not just because of the path of the storm but also because he still worried there were people who weren’t listening to the warnings. It wasn’t just the tornado’s savage winds that killed but also people’s reaction to the storm, or their inaction. So many people had died needlessly by waiting too long to take shelter or by not bothering to take cover at all. The
thought of that happening again was driving Morgan crazy. Why wouldn’t they just listen and get out of there?

  While Gary England tried his best to conceal his trauma from the public, Morgan freely admitted to people that he thought he might have a little PTSD from all the bad weather he’d seen and the stress of worrying about viewers in the path of the storm. Though he and England could barely conceal their distaste for each other, they shared that lingering concern about whether they were doing everything they possibly could to save lives. England, who obsessively struggled to keep cool on air, addressed the torture more privately; Morgan had a more frantic air about him, which he now struggled to keep in check.

  By now Morgan had played all the cards in his deck in an effort to convince people in Moore of how much danger they were in. He had likened the storm to the May 3 tornado—and even those who hadn’t been around knew what that meant. He’d urged people again and again to get underground or “get out of the way”—warning them that an interior closet or bathroom wouldn’t be sufficient to protect them from the tornado’s intense winds. What more could he do?

  His voice had an anxious edge to it, and as the storm crossed Santa Fe Avenue and officially entered the city of Moore, he began to sound almost frustrated as he pleaded with viewers who might be in its trajectory to understand how dire the situation was. Those in the path of the storm should be evacuated by now based on the station’s warnings, Morgan declared, a hint of irritation in his voice. And then he began to sound like an upset parent lecturing a child who had misbehaved, repeating himself as he desperately tried to convince people that they were running out of time. “You cannot delay. You can’t think. You can’t delay. You’ve got to act!” Morgan said in a voice that verged on panic. “You’ve got to act! You can’t think or delay. You’ve got to act. And act. And act to save your life and your loved ones’ lives. You’ve got to act!”

  For many it was already too late. As the tornado entered the housing addition adjacent to Plaza Towers, entire blocks of homes were wiped out almost instantly by the storm’s horrific winds. Some residents had fled to the small number of storm shelters in their backyards, but others took cover in their homes, praying their tiny closets and bathrooms would be enough. For some they weren’t. On a single block along SW Fourteenth Street at Ginger Avenue, six people in neighboring homes died as the tornado picked off their houses one by one.

  Toward the middle of the block, inside a quaint little blue and white ranch-style home, Gina Stromski, a fifty-one-year-old retiree, was crouched in a closet with her beloved dog, Wylie, riding out the storm. A widow who was such a rabid OU football fan she had an entire room of her house dedicated to Sooner memorabilia, she was on the phone with her brother-in-law as the tornado closed in. “Maybe it will turn,” she said hopefully—and then the phone went dead. Next door Cindy Plumley, a forty-nine-year-old nurse, was riding out the storm in her bathroom with her daughter and two grandkids when the house collapsed on top of them, killing her instantly. Earlier that afternoon she had been planning a getaway to mark her fiftieth birthday the following month. She had wanted to take the kids to Disneyland.

  Down the street two homes were completely swept off their foundations by the storm. Inside one was Randy Smith, a quiet thirty-nine-year-old electrician who was planning to attend his son Dylan’s graduation from Southmoore High School that Saturday. His family had tried to reach him again and again ahead of the storm, but he hadn’t picked up his phone. A video-game junkie, he often wore headphones when he played, and afterward his father, Terry, wondered if he’d been too engrossed to notice that the weather outside had turned.

  A few doors down Tawauna Robinson and her fiancé, Leslie Johnson, had taken shelter inside a closet at a home they shared with her twenty-five-year-old son Lamarr. Tawauna, a vivacious woman who loved life even on bad days, had only recently moved to Moore from St. Louis to be closer to her son. They loved to dance, and together she and Lamarr would have impromptu dance parties in his tiny rental house, just as they had when he was a toddler back in Missouri. On that Monday Lamarr, who was out of town, could hear the fear in his mother’s voice when she called to tell him about the storm. A woman of strong faith, Tawauna was praying the Lord would protect her and Pee Wee, as Johnson was known among his closest friends. No matter what, God had been good to her.

  A few hours later her body was found near her fiancé’s in the twisted rubble of their home.

  Across the street from Gina Stromski’s house, Rick Jones, a fifty-four-year-old postal worker, had taken cover in a tiny closet inside the beige and white house where he’d ridden out the 1999 tornado. Jones was a simple man who lived a largely solitary life. He wasn’t married and he worked nights sorting mail. A few months before the storm he bought a black Corvette, the flashiest thing he had ever owned. After the storm a stranger who had rushed to Moore to help rescue victims found Jones’s body in the closet, where the house had collapsed upon him. A Bible was at his knees. His beloved Corvette was down the block, mangled beyond recognition.

  A street away, on Penn Lane, Jerrie Bhonde was sitting inside the shower with her husband, Hemant, as the tornado approached. They didn’t have a storm shelter, but even if they had, her husband was so frail he probably wouldn’t have been able to make it down the steps. A former worker at the local General Motors plant, Hemant suffered from osteoporosis so severe that he could barely leave the house. Jerrie, his wife of forty years, had retired to care for her husband, who had immigrated to Oklahoma from India decades ago. They spent their entire days together laughing and talking. He often sat at the window looking out at Plaza Towers Elementary across the field from their house. He loved to watch the kids play and frolic—even if he could barely move.

  In the bathroom the ground began to shake as the tornado approached, and Jerrie clutched her husband’s hand tightly, telling him how much she loved him. Suddenly it was upon them, and the walls around them disintegrated in seconds. The couple began to be sucked into the air by the monster twister, but Jerrie refused to let go. The storm would not take her beloved. Yet the force soon became too much and she felt her grip begin to slip. She barely had time to look at his face one last time before her husband disappeared into the sky.

  CHAPTER 16

  3:20 P.M., MAY 20

  Outside the nearly forty-year-old walls of Plaza Towers Elementary it had grown eerily still. The rain had ceased, the hail had stopped, and even the blustery winds that had been screaming through the school’s creaky old windows seemed to have momentarily died down. To anyone who didn’t know better, it might have seemed that the storm had miraculously lifted, that the horrible nightmare suddenly was over. Yet it’s the silence that people who live in Tornado Alley have learned to fear the most, that ominous pause before the worst usually comes.

  The teachers inside Plaza Towers knew it likely wasn’t over, but as they crouched down in the dark hallways alongside or on top of their tiny students, some couldn’t help but hope that maybe, just maybe, their desperate pleas to God had been answered. That somehow that terrible tornado coming for them had lifted right back up into the sky, sparing their students, their school, and their city. Lord, lift it, please lift it, Emily Eischen, a thirty-three-year-old second-grade teacher, silently prayed as she knelt in the hallway of the school’s back building.

  But in the distance she could hear a dull roar, and as the storm crept closer and closer, the sound grew louder and even more grotesque. The noise was unlike anything she had ever heard before, so horrifying it seemed to come straight from the lowest depths of hell. It was a ghastly combination of the whooshing, high-pitched sound of a whining jet engine and the rattling, metallic rumble of a howling freight train speeding out of control. As it grew near, one could hear snapping wood and the ear-piercing screech of bending steel. It was the gnashing, violent soundtrack of an increasingly demonic monster that pulverized everything in its path, sparing almost nothing on the landscape
as it made its way toward Plaza Towers and the heart of Moore.

  Inside the school the tornado’s roar grew impossibly loud, so deafening that it felt to many as if their ears were about to explode. The building began to shake and the ground rumbled beneath them, and as the storm seemed to be right on top of them, the teachers braced themselves for the hit, anticipating it like the car wreck you see coming too late to prevent. Time seemed to stand still. Instead of hitting the building, the twister only howled painfully louder. The storm had slowed to a crawl—torturously prolonging the terror of the teachers, who clutched their students closer, unsure of what to do.

  Near the front of the building Amy Simpson was crammed into a tiny one-person bathroom inside her office, listening to the tornado as it grew near. She was squeezed in with four other women—Penny, her office assistant; a secretary; the school’s guidance counselor; and the music teacher. The space was barely four feet wide and there was not an inch of room to spare. Simpson was on the ground, her body wrapped around the slim pedestal of the sink. Her secretary was sitting on the toilet behind her, her knees digging sharply into Simpson’s back as she grabbed the top of the sink for reinforcement. The others were jammed in tight on the floor around them. They had covered their heads with cushions taken from their office chairs—though Simpson wondered how much help they would really be.

  The electricity had gone out and the bathroom was pitch-black, illuminated only by a thin sliver of light that peeked around the sides of the closed door. But that soon faded as the sky outside grew even darker than it had been before, the daylight now blocked out completely by the ominous wall of a storm that was just blocks away. Simpson had never been so close to a tornado before. Somehow she’d missed all the other storms that had hit Moore over the years. Simpson loved the weather, but she had never once forgotten how dangerous it could be.