Oklahoma Tornado - Austin Sipple

Rolling out of bed that morning to the smell of bacon was the last thing I thought was going to happen.  It was a Monday and since when did my father ever cook breakfast on a school day, let alone a workday for himself.  Either way I most definitely was not complaining. When I finished preparing for another ‘terrific’ day of Junior High, I stumbled the to back steps to attempt to maneuver my half asleep leg down one limp at a time.  My younger sister was already devouring the pieces of meat at the kitchen table.  I grabbed a handful of greasy strips and headed out of the door dreading another day in this place I call prison.

After gliding so irascibly down the halls of Highland East all day, I found that it was already two thirty in the afternoon.  I happened to over hear a couple talk about how there was a severe tornado warning a few minutes ago.  All of sudden the loud speaker interrupted and our principal came over, “students do not panic but there has been a tornado warning put in to affect, your parents have been informed that you students are to be going home imminently”.  I look around and it seems that I’m the only one not on the phone with my parents.  My phone vibrates and it’s my mother. I answer and she screams in a frightened voice that she’s outside of the school waiting for me.   As I continue to jump in to her car the radio is own with a stern voice making anyone listening aware that there was a tornado that had touched down on a few miles away and was heading towards the Oklahoma suburb of Moore, my home town.

My mother and I arrive home finally after that ever too long of a car ride.  I rush to the door and slam it open knocking the tower of survival supplies my father had been stacking clear across the living room.  I looked to see my little sister crying in a corner holding and squeezing her pillow as if it was going to fly away from her.  The television was on so I turned my attention that way.  The newscaster was advising anyone in a five-mile radius of Moore to stay where they were because it was too dangerous to try to evacuate.  My father must have heard the same commands because next thing you know he had me by the shirt and my sister by the hand herding us like cattle in to the basement.  Mother was right behind us with a handful of the supplies and father was down the stairs before the door even closed behind him.

There were all kinds of noises.  The banging, smashing, and crashing were expected, but the shrieking of the devastating winds was unimaginable.  It sounded like some mythical creature just wreaking havoc on our house for about twenty minutes then it was over.  We stayed in the basement for another thirty minutes incase there was still debris flying around as my dad said.  When I was given the go ahead by my father I creped up the stairs, slowly cracking the door open inch by inch.  I thought I walked in to a movie once I got the door open completely. The sidewall of my house was gone.  I could see clear across what used to be three properties to my neighbor’s house down four doors down.  I stepped across the living room out in to the grass.  All around were mangled cars and houses ripped to nothing more than the foundations they once sat on.

That day we lost fifty-one members of our community and too many families were affected by this natural disaster. Just the pure astonishment that every thing that everyone had ever worked for or cherished was gone in the matter of fifteen minutes hit me the second I saw the results of the storm.  Things will most likely never go back to how they were and the people and lives ruined by Mother Nature herself will never forget this day.