May 8th Tornado continued

Back at Patty's, they were working on loading recoverable items into vehicles to be transported to storage. They were worried about the possibility of more rain during the night and wanted to save what they could from more potential damage or loss. About 20 minutes or so after I arrived Sarah and K Lee showed up. They had gone to our house after the storm since their electricity was out, but it had taken Sarah almost 2 hours to get there due to traffic! I had apparently arrived home and left, ahead of Sarah by 15 minutes or so. Jeremy, Patty's son, who is a Moore policeman, also showed up to help. He and his family had been staying with Patty and Alan while their new house is being built. He said once it was dark, the police weren't letting anyone back into the neighborhood, even if they had identification indicating they lived there.

We stayed and helped move things out until about ten o'clock, everyone decided it was time to give up for the night. Sarah had parked at an apartment complex outside Patty's neighborhood and walked in, so we headed that way to drop her off. We encountered a roadblock about a three or four blocks from where Sarah had parked and had to drop her and K Lee off there to walk the rest of the way to their car.

We finally made it home around 10:20. Traffic had improved around the non-damaged parts of town since the highway had reopened. Our electricity was still off so we lit candles and turned on a radio. Most of the phones in town still weren't working and Peggy couldn't get ahold of Sarah, so she decided she needed to drive over there to make sure she had arrived home safely. Shortly after Peggy left, the electricity came back on. A little while later, Sarah showed up at our house! She had gotten home and their electricity was still off and Jerrold wasn't home either, so she had decided to come back to our house to stay the night. Soon after that, Peggy called from Sarah's house and I told her Sarah was now at our house. Finally, fairly late, everyone made it home and we retired for the night.

The next day, a Friday, the Moore schools were closed. Peggy stayed home and Lyndsey and her went over to her sisters to help clean up. I went to work and found out my boss, Debbie, who also lives in Moore, had sustained a fair amount of roof damage to her house and she was staying home to clean up. The weekend saw a lot of work cleaning up and moving. Traffic on I-35 crawled through Moore for two or three days due to the destruction which was visible from the highway. All in all though, if your property wasn't directly affected by the tornado, life in Moore returned to normal much more quickly than after the May 3rd tornado in 1999.

Continue to the next page to see more pictures of the tornado aftermath.

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