May 8th Tornado continued

I was able to get out of the neighborhood fairly easily. I worked my way out to Broadway. The traffic on Broadway going north was bumper to bumper and standing still. There was virtually no southbound traffic, so I turned south although I needed to go north to get to Sarah's. I thought I could turn west on 12th Street and then head back north at Santa Fe. This plan was quickly eliminated when I got to 12th and saw the Police had it blockaded. I decided to go to our house on the chance that Sarah had gone over there after the storm.

I headed south and worked my way through town to 4th Street with relatively little trouble. As I turned on to 4th street I could see I-35 and realized no one was getting off on the exit. I then realized there was no one in the southbound lanes. I thought, unbelievably, they must have shut down the highway in the middle of rush hour. The traffic going west on 4th was a parking lot. As I sat in traffic I listened to the radio and learned the highway had been shut down due to an overturned truck and other wrecked vehicles. As it turned out, the tornado had blown through a row of hotels on the west side of I-35, then crossed over the highway tossing about vehicles before crashing into a neighborhood. This explained the traffic conditions in Moore. All southbound I-35 rush hour traffic had been detoured through town. This, combined with the emergency vehicle traffic and streets which had been closed due to tornado damage had created a huge mess.

I finally made it to the house to find the electricity was out. There was no sign of Sarah so I left. Surprisingly, the Dollar General outside the neighborhood had electricity. I ran inside and bought some candles and a flashlight and batteries since I didn't know how long the electricity would be out. Radio reports indicated that traveling down Santa Fe was a questionable proposition, and since that was the way I would need to go to get to Sarah's, I decided against it and headed back to Patty and Alan's house instead. I actually made it back fairly quickly, only having to sit in traffic for about the last third of a mile.

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