‘You start to feel the walls breathe': Oklahomans share harrowing tornado survival stories
While homes and businesses across a swath of Oklahoma lay destroyed on Thursday morning following a destructive twister the night prior, toys, books and backpacks lay scattered across the yard of one Shawnee, Oklahoma, daycare.
Severe weather unleashed a flurry of tornadoes Wednesday evening, a handful of which caused intense destruction across the Sooner State.
The staff and children of Story Book Academy had long gone home for the day when the storm descended upon Shawnee, which is located less than 40 miles southeast of Oklahoma City. The building, however, did not escape unscathed.
Strong winds had pried a significant portion of the roof from the structure and what remained bucked and bowed into whatever rooms were left standing. Several of the exterior walls had been knocked over like the walls of a doll house. Now, an important question remains.
"I'm trying to figure out where our babies are going to go," Story Book Academy Program Director Cecelia Hardeman told AccuWeather National Reporter Bill Wadell.
Just up the road, truck driver Jim Johnson had been trying to catch a few hours of sleep before an early morning delivery when his truck started rocking.
"The truck was rocking and everything, and the next thing I know, I'm upside down, and there was stuff flying through the air and hitting me," Johnson told Wadell.
It wasn't until the highway patrol came by and broke his window that he was able to escape the vehicle.
At the home of Micole Trimmer, the garage roof now sits on the patio after the tornado in Shawnee peeled it from the structure. The majority of the rest of the home's roof was also gone.
Trimmer had been under two tornado warnings Wednesday night and took cover in the bathroom during both. While the first storm passed by the city, the second struck her neighborhood, slamming into her home.
"Brick walls are solid; they shouldn't be moving, and they're just breathing like they had a life of their own," Trimmer said. "It was scary."
A National Weather Service survey crew found EF2 tornado damage following the twister.
But before the tornado hit, she described hearing the storm overhead, comparable to a freight train yet noticeably different. The thunder rumbled like wheels roaring against the track, and the hail crescendoed as the storm grew closer.
Then everything went silent.
"We thought it was over," Trimmer said. "And then you just realize you're in the center of it. And then all of a sudden, everything's coming at you. You start to feel the walls breathe, the cabinets are moving. You feel things piercing the roof and the walls."
Some 40 miles southwest of Shawnee, at least three fatalities were confirmed in Cole, Oklahoma, following a large and destructive tornado. This made it the deadliest tornado day in Oklahoma since May 20, 2013, when 24 people were killed by an EF5 tornado that leveled the city of Moore.
The tornado that hit Cole, while devastating, wasn't as strong as the Moore tornado. On Thursday morning, an NWS survey crew announced they had found EF3 tornado damage near the town.
Meteorologists described the storm as having "erratic" behavior as the NWS office in Norman, Oklahoma, warned residents that the storm was exhibiting a Fujiwhara effect with circulations rotating around each other.
The scene on the radar even had NWS meteorologists who had issued warnings during the Moore tornadoes in 1999 and 2013 surprised.
"I've never seen something like this before," Alex Zwink, an NWS meteorologist at the Norman office, told Wadell. "Really kind of keys on that this is a very unique event that we saw happen."
As the tornado roared through Cole, Ralina Vestle and her fiance grabbed their dogs and ran to the underground tornado shelter. The storm followed, straining the heavy shelter door that the two couldn't close and bending the frame.
"We just hid down there behind the stairs, and I watched it all go over," Vestle said. "I watched that truck go over my head and everything."
Bricks now mark the front doorstep of the home. The rest of the structure was leveled.
Shawn Sullivan had been at home with his wife and two children when the storm rolled into Cole, Oklahoma. As he watched the radar, he said it had appeared like the storm would miss them up until it curled around and dipped down on top of them.
"You could see the wind. The rain was going one way and the wind was going in another direction, and you could see it swirling, and I just saw it drop down," Sullivan told Wadell. "And then we just barely made it to the room."
The family ran to the mudroom, which was located in the middle of the house and held the laundry utilities. After lofting a mattress over the washer and dryer, they took shelter in the space between and held on as the storm raged around them.
The tornado leveled their home, snapping wooden beams, bulldozing over brick walls and crumpling the garage door. The house came down around the Sullivans, briefly trapping them. But they were alive.
"It saved us," Sullivan said of the mudroom and set up with the mattress. "It saved us."
Beams had fallen on top of where the family was taking shelter, but after about five minutes, Sullivan said they had found a hole to crawl out of.
"I always thought it was going to be somebody else, you know?" he added. "Not this time."
Reporting by AccuWeather National Reporter Bill Wadell.
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