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Rising from RUBBLE


Is the glass half empty or half full?


On the afternoon of May 20, 2013, Don Lee, 73, a lifelong Moore resident and survivor of the 1999 tornado, sat calmly on his front porch, watching the angry skies darken to his west. Like a true Oklahoman, Lee knew too well that watching fuming skies in the Oklahoma spring is the norm, not the exception. Listening to the alarming weather reports, his wife and son were making preparations to head underground into their concrete cellar.


“I saw the sky getting really dark and the news man said the tornado was one mile away and the only way to survive was to be underground. I decided that was close enough,” Lee, an Oklahoma Electric Cooperative member (OEC), said. He ducked into the cellar with his wife and son, leaving a glass of tea half full on the windowsill near his storm cellar door. Just next door, John Pugsley—Lee’s neighbor and OEC member—was


working at his auto shop across the gravel drive between the homes. Pugsley collected old cars and rebuilt them as his busy schedule allowed. His wife called and told him, “Better get in the storm cellar; this is a bad one.” Looking west, Pugsley’s fi rst inclination was to duck into his house under a staircase.


“Something didn’t feel right about this one, and I decided to take my wife’s advice for once and use the storm cellar,” he said. George Cruz, who lived across the street from Lee and Pugsley, was three miles north, listening to the weather as the storm approached. “I knew it was headed for my home. Luckily my wife and kids were not


home at the time,” Cruz said.


Cruz’s next-door neighbor, Gary Jones, an OEC district lineman sat in his line truck two miles south of the storm. “I have been on a lot of these disaster calls after 30 years of working as a lineman. Our job is to roll in right behind the storm, secure downed powerlines, and then get the power back on as soon as possible,” Jones said. “This time I knew it was headed straight for my home.”


EF5 Rolls In


“You know how people say a tornado sounds like a buffalo stampede or a train approaching, or the start of a NASCAR race?” Lee asked as he stood on the wiped-clean concrete slab that once was his home. “It doesn’t sound like any of that. I’ll tell you what an EF5 tornado headed straight your way sounds like… ”


Lee paused, looked away and wiped a stray tear, he continued with cloudy eyes and a low voice, “It sounds like hell.”


As one of the most devastating storms in U.S. history passed over his


home, Lee, his wife and son huddled in their underground shelter, the noise above them overpowering all talk. The powerful suction from the storm condensed the water vapor in the shelter, instantly filling the darkness with a dense fog of insulation, dirt and other fl ying debris. “That was when I thought we were going to die,” Lee said. Most tornadoes pass within 15 to 30 seconds, but this monster, termed a ‘grinder’ by the news media, sat over Lee’s home for well over a minute—


By James Pratt


16


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