In tornado-ravaged Moore, Okla., a town endures under ‘the mercy of the sky’, It was barely 7 p.m. last Saturday night, but the streets were deserted.
As Steve Eddy drove toward City Hall, he passed dark storefronts and empty restaurants. It is usually the busiest night of the week in this bustling suburb south of Oklahoma City, but although it was still light out, many businesses had shuttered hours earlier than usual. A storm was coming, and no one wanted to be in its way, not even if it meant losing income or a night’s pay.
As Moore’s longtime city manager, it was Eddy’s job to be on call for his hometown in good times and bad. And as he headed into work last weekend to be on guard for treacherous weather, he stared out the car window at the ghost town his city had become ahead of what many feared could be the next big storm. It was a sight that he’d seen many times in recent weeks, as the annual spring thunderstorms began to roll through, but he never found it any less unsettling — a town practically shut down by residents on edge. But Eddy couldn’t blame them. Who could after everything they’d been through?
Almost no other city in the world has been as unlucky with storms as Moore. Six times in 17 years the town has been hit by a significant tornado, including a mile-wide twister with winds measured at more than 200 mph that killed 24 people on May 20, 2013. Mother Nature has been so unsparing that many locals refer to Moore as “the tornado alley of tornado alley.” The storms have been so frequent that people here have little doubt they will be hit again. The only question is when — and it’s become an increasingly heavy burden on a city that has prided itself on its resilience and ability to rise again in spite of whatever the weather has thrown its way.Two years later, many here have found that the May 20 storm has been the hardest to overcome — and some wonder if they ever truly will. Every new storm — and lately, there have been many — brings back the feelings of the trauma the city suffered that day. And with more storms in the forecast in coming days, the people of Moore remain on edge, casting a wary eye toward the sky and praying they will be spared.
Last weekend, just days before the two-year anniversary of that epic storm, Moore was bracing for another “big one,” as residents here call the powerful twister. Eddy and his colleagues had gathered inside Moore’s emergency operations center, a year-old facility specifically built to withstand tornadoes after too many close calls with storms over the years. They somberly kept an eye on the radar and monitored the local television stations, which had been on air for hours showing ominous footage of the storms on approach as captured by their collective armies of chasers on the ground and in helicopters in the sky.
Within one of the storms, a funnel was slinking up and down between the clouds and the rural farmland to the southwest of Moore. At first glance, it didn’t look as terrifying as the other storms that have roared through town, but every killer tornado that has preyed on Moore began this way — small and seemingly innocent, as though it might just pop back up into the sky and never be seen again. With every unpredictable twitch of the storm, Eddy and his colleagues stared at the radar and nervously wondered if this would be the terrible tornado they’d feared, another one like that 2013 storm.
At one point, Todd Jenson, Eddy’s deputy, let out a sigh. “It’s like waiting for your own execution,” he said.
Weary after weeks of storms that seemed to blur together, Eddy could only nod. As he sat there watching yet another round of bad weather head toward Moore, he considered the same questions he’d been asking himself for years as he watched dangerous storms time and again barrel toward his city each spring. Why was it happening to Moore, again? Hadn’t they been through enough?
At 59, Eddy had spent most of his life in Moore, working for the city that he loved. He was a “lifer,” as they called people here who had grown up in Moore and never left. The city was barely a blip on the map when he and his parents arrived in the 1960s, drawn in by the ability to buy a nice house cheaply and the quiet allure of suburban life. Back then, only a couple thousand people lived in Moore, which rose up in the mostly rural farmland in between Oklahoma City and Norman, home of the University of Oklahoma.
Over the years, Eddy watched as his hometown slowly grew into a thriving suburb with a population of nearly 60,000 people. But even as the town grew, it somehow still retained that small-town feel, a place where everybody seemed to know each other. At City Hall, many of the relationships went back decades. Eddy had known the mayor, Glenn Lewis, and Stan Drake, the assistant city manager, since they were students at Moore High School. They were the same age, and all had graduated in 1973. They knew each other as well as they knew anybody, and that familiarity, personal history and mutual trust soon came in handy as they faced the daunting task of rebuilding their hometown in the aftermath of terrible storms.For Eddy and everyone else in central Oklahoma, the spring thunderstorms were just a usual part of life, as normal as an intake of breath. But then the “big ones” started to roll through, killer storms that were wider than the eye could see and reduced neighborhoods to piles of bricks and sticks in mere seconds as they left unimaginable carnage in their wake.
On May 3, 1999, a mile-wide tornado wiped out a huge swath of Moore, killing more than 40 people and rendering more than 10,000 people homeless in just seconds. Eddy could still recall as though it were yesterday the terrible shock he felt standing in the middle of one of those flattened neighborhoods looking at horrific destruction as far as the eye could see. He stood there wondering if his town would ever recover — but somehow it did. It was the storm that taught Eddy and his colleagues how to deal with every tornado since, how to pick up and move on — even when it seems impossible. Four years later, in 2003, another tornado hit, followed by another in 2010, and that doesn’t include all the treacherous, destructive storms in between that came close to producing twisters.
Again and again, the people of Moore have rebuilt, better and stronger, determined not to let the weather get the best of them. But then came the May 2013 tornado, a mile-wide monstrosity that cut a deadly path through the center of town in the middle of a Monday afternoon. In the path: two elementary schools, where kids had nowhere to go but to the hallways to take shelter. Seven third-graders at Plaza Towers Elementary died when the school collapsed on top of them — a staggering loss from which many in the city are still struggling to deal with years later.
Eighty-two tornadoes were recorded in Oklahoma between January and May of 2013, a record-breaking year that included two of the strongest tornadoes captured on record: the May 20 storm that hit Moore and a May 31 tornado that, at 2.6 miles wide, was wider than the island of Manhattan. After that, the tornado sirens did not sound again in Oklahoma for nearly a year, an unusual reprieve that continued well into 2014. Just 16 tornadoes were recorded in Oklahoma last year, the lowest number since tornado records started being kept in the 1950s. It remains a lapse that puzzled scientists have struggled to understand. But lately, many in Moore have wondered whether Mother Nature isn’t making up for lost time.
In recent weeks, the tornado sirens in Moore have sounded almost nonstop, as storms have skirted the city again and again. On March 25, the unthinkable happened. Another tornado casually dropped from the sky and took aim toward Moore again, moving along almost the same path that the other tornadoes had taken.
The tornado developed so quickly that the National Weather Service didn’t have time to issue a warning. And that meant the emergency sirens in Moore, which are often triggered after receiving word from the weather service, didn’t go off for several minutes. Many residents were caught off-guard, including Candie Westbrook, an image consultant, who only learned that a tornado was coming toward her house on the east side of Moore when she scrolled through her Instagram feed and spotted a video that someone nearby had posted of the storm.
Westbrook grabbed her two young kids, ages 5 and 6, and ran to a neighbor’s shelter. “It was terrifying,” she recalled. “How could there have been no sirens? No warning?”
It was a rare, agonizing miss for the city of Moore, which has been through so many storms that they are now professionals at dealing with disaster. But for Eddy, who is the only city manager in the country who can say he’s helped rebuild a city after two EF5 tornadoes (the strongest on the Fujita scale), the pressure at times this spring has felt almost overwhelming.
Sitting at his desk at City Hall earlier this week during a brief reprieve from the bad weather, Eddy looked exhausted as he spoke of the recent storms that had swept through the city — so many that they all seemed to blur together, he said. He openly worried about the toll it was taking on his city’s “psyche” — and on him and his staff, who have been working almost nonstop in recent weeks as the bad weather rolled through.
“It weighs on you, the responsibility to protect people,” Eddy said. “All you do is worry.”
Among the residents, Eddy senses a fear and anxiousness that hadn’t been there after the 1999 tornado and the many others that have come through. For some reason he couldn’t quite explain, the May 20 storm had been different. Though many of the devastated neighborhoods had been rebuilt, it was the emotional damage that was taking longer to recover from. People are more jittery, more fearful of the storms. For many residents, every time a new round of bad weather came through, it waslike ripping the scab off the scar of May 20, and Eddy wonders if it will ever really heal.
“It’s a fear of the inevitable,” Eddy said. “You don’t want it to happen again, but you know we’re probably going to see another tornado.”
From his office, the windows offer a sweeping view of the western sky. It was sunny that day, but like others in Moore, Eddy knows that another storm will eventually come. In the heart of tornado alley, it’s their fate to live at the constant mercy of the sky.
As Steve Eddy drove toward City Hall, he passed dark storefronts and empty restaurants. It is usually the busiest night of the week in this bustling suburb south of Oklahoma City, but although it was still light out, many businesses had shuttered hours earlier than usual. A storm was coming, and no one wanted to be in its way, not even if it meant losing income or a night’s pay.
As Moore’s longtime city manager, it was Eddy’s job to be on call for his hometown in good times and bad. And as he headed into work last weekend to be on guard for treacherous weather, he stared out the car window at the ghost town his city had become ahead of what many feared could be the next big storm. It was a sight that he’d seen many times in recent weeks, as the annual spring thunderstorms began to roll through, but he never found it any less unsettling — a town practically shut down by residents on edge. But Eddy couldn’t blame them. Who could after everything they’d been through?
Almost no other city in the world has been as unlucky with storms as Moore. Six times in 17 years the town has been hit by a significant tornado, including a mile-wide twister with winds measured at more than 200 mph that killed 24 people on May 20, 2013. Mother Nature has been so unsparing that many locals refer to Moore as “the tornado alley of tornado alley.” The storms have been so frequent that people here have little doubt they will be hit again. The only question is when — and it’s become an increasingly heavy burden on a city that has prided itself on its resilience and ability to rise again in spite of whatever the weather has thrown its way.Two years later, many here have found that the May 20 storm has been the hardest to overcome — and some wonder if they ever truly will. Every new storm — and lately, there have been many — brings back the feelings of the trauma the city suffered that day. And with more storms in the forecast in coming days, the people of Moore remain on edge, casting a wary eye toward the sky and praying they will be spared.
Last weekend, just days before the two-year anniversary of that epic storm, Moore was bracing for another “big one,” as residents here call the powerful twister. Eddy and his colleagues had gathered inside Moore’s emergency operations center, a year-old facility specifically built to withstand tornadoes after too many close calls with storms over the years. They somberly kept an eye on the radar and monitored the local television stations, which had been on air for hours showing ominous footage of the storms on approach as captured by their collective armies of chasers on the ground and in helicopters in the sky.
Within one of the storms, a funnel was slinking up and down between the clouds and the rural farmland to the southwest of Moore. At first glance, it didn’t look as terrifying as the other storms that have roared through town, but every killer tornado that has preyed on Moore began this way — small and seemingly innocent, as though it might just pop back up into the sky and never be seen again. With every unpredictable twitch of the storm, Eddy and his colleagues stared at the radar and nervously wondered if this would be the terrible tornado they’d feared, another one like that 2013 storm.
At one point, Todd Jenson, Eddy’s deputy, let out a sigh. “It’s like waiting for your own execution,” he said.
Weary after weeks of storms that seemed to blur together, Eddy could only nod. As he sat there watching yet another round of bad weather head toward Moore, he considered the same questions he’d been asking himself for years as he watched dangerous storms time and again barrel toward his city each spring. Why was it happening to Moore, again? Hadn’t they been through enough?
At 59, Eddy had spent most of his life in Moore, working for the city that he loved. He was a “lifer,” as they called people here who had grown up in Moore and never left. The city was barely a blip on the map when he and his parents arrived in the 1960s, drawn in by the ability to buy a nice house cheaply and the quiet allure of suburban life. Back then, only a couple thousand people lived in Moore, which rose up in the mostly rural farmland in between Oklahoma City and Norman, home of the University of Oklahoma.
Over the years, Eddy watched as his hometown slowly grew into a thriving suburb with a population of nearly 60,000 people. But even as the town grew, it somehow still retained that small-town feel, a place where everybody seemed to know each other. At City Hall, many of the relationships went back decades. Eddy had known the mayor, Glenn Lewis, and Stan Drake, the assistant city manager, since they were students at Moore High School. They were the same age, and all had graduated in 1973. They knew each other as well as they knew anybody, and that familiarity, personal history and mutual trust soon came in handy as they faced the daunting task of rebuilding their hometown in the aftermath of terrible storms.For Eddy and everyone else in central Oklahoma, the spring thunderstorms were just a usual part of life, as normal as an intake of breath. But then the “big ones” started to roll through, killer storms that were wider than the eye could see and reduced neighborhoods to piles of bricks and sticks in mere seconds as they left unimaginable carnage in their wake.
On May 3, 1999, a mile-wide tornado wiped out a huge swath of Moore, killing more than 40 people and rendering more than 10,000 people homeless in just seconds. Eddy could still recall as though it were yesterday the terrible shock he felt standing in the middle of one of those flattened neighborhoods looking at horrific destruction as far as the eye could see. He stood there wondering if his town would ever recover — but somehow it did. It was the storm that taught Eddy and his colleagues how to deal with every tornado since, how to pick up and move on — even when it seems impossible. Four years later, in 2003, another tornado hit, followed by another in 2010, and that doesn’t include all the treacherous, destructive storms in between that came close to producing twisters.
Again and again, the people of Moore have rebuilt, better and stronger, determined not to let the weather get the best of them. But then came the May 2013 tornado, a mile-wide monstrosity that cut a deadly path through the center of town in the middle of a Monday afternoon. In the path: two elementary schools, where kids had nowhere to go but to the hallways to take shelter. Seven third-graders at Plaza Towers Elementary died when the school collapsed on top of them — a staggering loss from which many in the city are still struggling to deal with years later.
Eighty-two tornadoes were recorded in Oklahoma between January and May of 2013, a record-breaking year that included two of the strongest tornadoes captured on record: the May 20 storm that hit Moore and a May 31 tornado that, at 2.6 miles wide, was wider than the island of Manhattan. After that, the tornado sirens did not sound again in Oklahoma for nearly a year, an unusual reprieve that continued well into 2014. Just 16 tornadoes were recorded in Oklahoma last year, the lowest number since tornado records started being kept in the 1950s. It remains a lapse that puzzled scientists have struggled to understand. But lately, many in Moore have wondered whether Mother Nature isn’t making up for lost time.
In recent weeks, the tornado sirens in Moore have sounded almost nonstop, as storms have skirted the city again and again. On March 25, the unthinkable happened. Another tornado casually dropped from the sky and took aim toward Moore again, moving along almost the same path that the other tornadoes had taken.
The tornado developed so quickly that the National Weather Service didn’t have time to issue a warning. And that meant the emergency sirens in Moore, which are often triggered after receiving word from the weather service, didn’t go off for several minutes. Many residents were caught off-guard, including Candie Westbrook, an image consultant, who only learned that a tornado was coming toward her house on the east side of Moore when she scrolled through her Instagram feed and spotted a video that someone nearby had posted of the storm.
Westbrook grabbed her two young kids, ages 5 and 6, and ran to a neighbor’s shelter. “It was terrifying,” she recalled. “How could there have been no sirens? No warning?”
It was a rare, agonizing miss for the city of Moore, which has been through so many storms that they are now professionals at dealing with disaster. But for Eddy, who is the only city manager in the country who can say he’s helped rebuild a city after two EF5 tornadoes (the strongest on the Fujita scale), the pressure at times this spring has felt almost overwhelming.
Sitting at his desk at City Hall earlier this week during a brief reprieve from the bad weather, Eddy looked exhausted as he spoke of the recent storms that had swept through the city — so many that they all seemed to blur together, he said. He openly worried about the toll it was taking on his city’s “psyche” — and on him and his staff, who have been working almost nonstop in recent weeks as the bad weather rolled through.
“It weighs on you, the responsibility to protect people,” Eddy said. “All you do is worry.”
Among the residents, Eddy senses a fear and anxiousness that hadn’t been there after the 1999 tornado and the many others that have come through. For some reason he couldn’t quite explain, the May 20 storm had been different. Though many of the devastated neighborhoods had been rebuilt, it was the emotional damage that was taking longer to recover from. People are more jittery, more fearful of the storms. For many residents, every time a new round of bad weather came through, it waslike ripping the scab off the scar of May 20, and Eddy wonders if it will ever really heal.
“It’s a fear of the inevitable,” Eddy said. “You don’t want it to happen again, but you know we’re probably going to see another tornado.”
From his office, the windows offer a sweeping view of the western sky. It was sunny that day, but like others in Moore, Eddy knows that another storm will eventually come. In the heart of tornado alley, it’s their fate to live at the constant mercy of the sky.
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