Tuesday, May 21, 2013

It's What We Do


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.

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