When the fire department finally arrived, they told us to evacuate to the Church of the Rock. As you can see on the first map, we had to go about a mile to the next block west of our house. Since Audra didn’t have any shoes and we were carrying a dog, cat and two small children (six and two), I stopped and asked a neighbor whose house and car were undamaged to give us a ride. Our cars were buried under our clasped garage. We found out later that there were buses at the High School ready to take people to the Church, but that was on the north side of the tornado debris and we were south.
From now on I’ll refer to the second map. The red line is the route we took to get to the Church and the brown line is the tornaodo debris path.
We drove from our neighbor’s house to the main road. At number two on the map, the police stopped us and said no cars were allowed to go on the road because the power lines were across road. However the police said it was ok to walk across the power lines. So we thanked our neighbor and started walking again.
We made it past the power lines. Carefully stepping over each one. I think the power was turned off by this time, but you never know. A few minutes later a car traveling at a high speed came up behind us. We flagged him down and he offered to take us to the church. I has wondering to myself why he was on this road when just minutes before we were stopped from driving on it. He was Lt Johnson an Oklahoma City police officer in his personnal vehicle.
Although the Church was just around the corner, Lt Johnson had to go to the police station (number 3 on the map) to pick up an official car. At the police station it was getting dark and the power was off. We had a quick bathroom break in the dark. At the station were German Shepherds. They were barking at our cat and dog.
Lt Johnson got his official vehicle and headed for the Church. I sat in the front seat with an animal crate on my lap. Audra and the kids were in the back seat. The traffic was now terrible. Seemed like everyone was out surveying the damage or just trying to get home through all the blocked roads and power outages. Lt Johnson was using his “tactical” driving skills. He put the lights on and drove down the wrong side of the road. We had missed supper and Jay was getting car sick in the back seat. I was pushing the imaginary break and thinking to myself “I survived an F5 tornado only to die in a police car”, but Lt Johnson knew what he was doing and got us to the Church (number 4 on the map).
We were at the Church of the Rock for a couple hours. We were able to contact Audra’s parents and our pastor via Ham Radio. Since the Church of the Rock was so close to the tornado path and had partial power, we were moved to Oakcrest Church of Christ (number 5 on the map). We got to ride in style this time in a huge charter bus.
The Millhouse 