People watch rescuers at Towers Plaza Elementary school in Moore, Okla., following Monday’s deadly tornado.Our hearts and prayers go out to the people of Moore, Okla., today – along with a Tennessee Red Cross team and a Tennessee-based federal search and rescue group.
Mother Nature was less than motherly Monday when a massive “shredder” tornado dropped from the sky and took neighborhoods, schools, a medical center and at least two dozen lives.
At the medical center, 60-year-old Betty Brooks, there for a doctor’s appointment, took refuge with others in a restroom just before the tornado tore through. She and several other adults strained to hold the door shut against the roaring devil wind until, after several minutes, the wind stopped.
“We opened the door and walked out, and there was nothing there,” she told a Wall Street Journal reporter.
Chattanooga area residents know the feeling. We’ve seen and lived the aftermath now of several tornadoes in recent years, most notably the spate of tornadoes that tracked here in late April 2011. Those twisters ravaged Apison, Ringgold, Rainsville and dozens of communities in between and left 76 people dead in Chattanooga’s tri-state region.