I guess I’ve come to take it for granted that Oklahomans are….well,
themselves. It takes a natural disaster and
national media attention and all of these people marveling over the strength of
Oklahomans for me to be reminded that maybe, just maybe, we’re cut from a
little different cloth around here.
I don’t know how many times over the past 24 hours, I’ve
heard people marvel at the strength and the resolve of the people of Moore and
the generosity of the rest of us and my response, muttered under my breath has
been, “It’s what we do.” Neighbors
helping neighbors? It’s what we do. Picking ourselves up after tragedy and
rebuilding? It’s what we do. Mock our weathermen during winter storm
season while lauding them during tornado season? It’s what we do.
The “Oklahoma Standard” is the real deal. I’ve always known that. Despite spending the better part of the last decade
in states other than Oklahoma, I have never NOT considered myself an
Oklahoman. I love this state. I love its people. I love the down-home, salt of the earth, help
your neighbor mentality of folks in these parts. I love that people in this state can deal
with tragedy with faith and good humor and concern for their neighbors, even in
the face of their own personal loss.
Because. It’s. What. We. Do.
The national news media, the people on either coast, seem to
be having trouble figuring out why in the world someone would want to live in a
place with natural disasters like this.
I understand it. Really, I
do. Which is why I understand that some
might think I’m crazy for thinking that if I had to choose between a hurricane or
a tornado, I’d take a tornado every day.
And I do have some experience with both, so I know of what I speak.
2004 was a fairly active hurricane season on the east
coast. It was also my first year of
graduate school at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, NC. All I remember from the month of September
2004 was rain. Hurricane Frances was
particularly irksome, having washed out part of I-40 near the Tennessee-North
Carolina state line. But I grew up in
Tornado Alley. Hell, last April, on a
visit to Stillwater, we found out just how well the Wheatley Family tornado
plan worked as the tornado sirens sounded in Stillwater in the middle of the
night. Give me tornadoes any day of the
week. The uninitiated must be looking at
the coverage of Moore on TV and thinking that I’m positively nuts, but let me
explain.
First, one does not have to evacuate hundreds of miles away
from home to escape a tornado. A sturdy
safe room or a basement nearby will do.
Not so with a hurricane.
Secondly, in hurricanes, particularly the really bad ones (think Sandy,
Katrina, etc), flooding and other problems can postpone cleanup and rebuilding
efforts for weeks, sometimes months. The
cleanup and rebuilding started today in Moore.
Third, hurricanes can cripple entire cities. While it may seem like all of Moore has been
destroyed, that’s not the case. And
because Oklahoma City was largely untouched, there was a very large crew of
first responders available to help.
I know what the folks on the coast will probably counter
with: But it happened so fast! Well,
yeah. It’s a tornado. But our weathermen had been warning us for
almost a week that this past weekend was ripe for some really bad weather. They all led the morning newscasts yesterday
with dire warnings to watch the weather, plan our days around the potential
times for bad weather (which they hit right on the money, by the way), make
sure kids knew what was going on since the weather would be hitting right
around the time school was letting out.
And then, when the storm formed south of Newcastle, there were storm
chasers and spotters in exactly the right places to see the storm, watch it
strengthen, and warn people where it was headed. The only way people wouldn’t have known that
there was a risk of tornadoes yesterday would be if they were completely
disconnected from the real world.
Oklahoma’s weathermen occasionally take a beating from their
viewing public. Mike Morgan’s sparkly
ties, saved for special severe weather occasions, have their own Twitter
account. Oklahoma weathermen are not
known for their savant-like winter weather prediction abilities. Many a “snowpocalypse” warning has been for
naught. But our weathermen KNOW
tornadoes. WE know tornadoes. And I am confident that had this storm
happened anywhere else, we would be talking about a death toll in the hundreds,
as opposed to the 24 we see in Moore right now.
We rebuild after such monstrosities as this because this is
home. We trust that our meteorologists
are the best in their field at dealing with severe weather. We help each other in times of crisis. It’s what we do. It’s what we’ve always done. And I’m proud of the fact that everyone else
in the country and in the world is getting to see what we do, even in spite of the circumstances.
