Surreal

Yesterday we had the opportunity to drive through the section of Oklahoma City that was hit by a tornado nearly a month ago.  We knew it was going to be significant when on our way into the city we saw fields with a sprinkling of debris, pieces of which were the size of large automobiles. These piles of twisted metal were probably parts of buildings that were ripped apart miles away and tossed here.  I say probably because you simply could not tell what they had been.

Remember, this is just the stuff that has been thrown in the field on the West side of Oklahoma City from a much smaller tornado than the one that hit the suburb of Moore.  The sight of it in no way prepared us for what we would see.

We approached the area on Highway 35.  On the way to the 19 street exit we passed the part of the freeway where the tornado jumped over it.  Here the damage seemed random.  You might have a sign torn and bent and the next sign over was perfectly straight.  You could see roofs of houses that looked as if someone had reached down and tried to pick them up but pinched too hard and pulled the tops off.  There were broken trees and piles of debris.  It gave you the sense without seeing it fully that something very big had happened here.

Turning off the freeway, we headed west until we reached the corner of S. Santa Fe Avenue.  On the corner the Walgreens had been damaged, they had a modular building set up in the parking lot as a pharmacy and repairs were already being made.  Across the street was a CVS.  It was totally undamaged.  We turned the corner and the businesses directly behind Walgreens were so damaged that you could not tell what kind of establishments they were.  Behind them the neighborhood lay in waste..

I will not be able to completely describe the devastation we saw.  We turned onto one of the neighborhood streets and there was a couple working on one of the utilities of their home, digging near the road.  The problem with the picture was there was no home, just piles of debris.  In this whole neighborhood, there was only one structure that remained that even resembled a house, and even then, your mind had to fill in a lot of the empty space.

Trees were broken and stripped bare.  Many were toppled.  The ones that remained standing had metal bent and wrapped around their trunks.  This was probably roofing or siding from structures miles away.  The path of this tornado was 17 miles long and 1.3 miles wide.  Who knows where it came from.

While the piles of rubble were large and there was no order to where things had come to rest, we were told that cleanup had already begun.  The autos that had lifted and tossed about like matchbox cars had already been removed.  One gentleman showed us a photo of two cars that had been bent and twisted together with such force that you could not tell what make or model they were.

What did remain was splintered 2 x 4’s, broken televisions, and crushed furniture. All you could think about was how the people who lived here were probably feeling just as splintered.  When you looked close, you could see evidence of this fact.  Lying admist the rubble were little signs of the life that was lived here.  We came across a bright red YoYo, and a bucket of trophies that someone had begun to gather, and apparently then decided to abandon.  These were reminders of the families, and children that are bearing the burden of this disaster.

We went back in our car, crossed S. Santa Fe Ave., and drove through the next neighborhood over.  Here there were men loading eighteen-wheelers with the piles of debris that had already been gathered for removal.  

This neighborhood was on the edge of the tornado’s path.  On one side of the street it looked exactly like the neighborhood we had just come from, piles of debris, concrete slabs where house had once stood and trees stripped bare. 

On the other side of the streets were cul-de-sacs where the homes on the ends had roofing damage, and blue tarps tacked down to protect the insides of the house which remained un-damaged.  As you looked down the street, you could see that the houses on the end of the courts remained undamaged. For the most part, these streets remained intact.

In was the juxtaposition of the two sides of the street that I experienced one of the most surreal moments of my life.  In the middle of the destruction on our right, a father stood on the concrete slab of what used to be his house.  His son was playing with some of the rubble that lay nearby.  I had noticed them when we first drove in this neighborhood.  We had been here for 15 minutes and I don’t know if I had seen the father move.  He just stood there as if trying to make sense in his own mind of what he was seeing.

On the right side of our car, where the streets were mostly intact there was a man in his front yard mowing his lawn.  His street is surrounded with destruction that I cannot even begin to fully describe to you.  His neighbors are picking through piles to try and find something of their life before the storm, and he is worried about the length of the grass.

Then it hit me, he too is probably trying to make sense in his own mind of what took place, why his house is standing and his neighbor’s is just gone.  Without rubble to pick through to process the grief, all he can do is mow the lawn.