This Is My Town: Our Story of the Moore F5 Tornado

May 20, 2013. The day that changed everything and proved everything I already believed about Oklahoma.

By Susan Honaker | Susan at Lime | Lime Realty

Moore, Oklahoma was established May 27, 1889 during the Land Run.

It is a beautiful town. The neighbors are friendly and helpful. The people love their city and they love the people who live in it. There is a song that became Moore's theme, "This Is My Town" and the words have always felt true here:

"Yeah, where I was born, where I was raised, where I keep all my yesterdays. Where I came back to settle down. This is where they'll put me in the ground. This is my town."

That is just how you are raised in Oklahoma. You pick yourself up. Then you start helping others.

On May 20, 2013, an F5 tornado came through Moore with wind speeds of 210 miles per hour. It was on the ground for 39 minutes. It carved a path 17 miles long and a mile wide. It destroyed 1,150 homes, two schools, and a hospital. It took 24 lives, ten of them children.

The financial damage was over two billion dollars.

The mental damage is beyond any number anyone could put on it.

Everyone in Moore has their own story of that day.

This is mine.

The Night Before

Oklahoma has one of the top National Weather Service offices in the country. The day before the storm, our news teams warned us clearly: a large severe weather system was moving in the next day. It could produce tornadoes. Be ready.

My husband Michael and I took the steps we had learned since moving to Oklahoma from Michigan. We went to the store and bought nonperishable food and water. We found helmets that fit all five of our children and ourselves. We put our important paperwork: birth certificates, car titles, in the safe. We bubble wrapped all of our son Evan's items as they could not be replaced. They were safely stored away in the closet I believed would be safe.

Going to bed that night, I was uneasy. Michael had to work the next day. I knew I would be on my own with the kids. I lay there going over our plan of action in my head, trying to feel prepared, knowing the weight of it would be mine to carry in the morning.

The Morning Of

Michael left for work. My oldest son Alex was getting ready for school.

My neighbor and good friend Cheryl called early. We were both worried about sending our children to school that day. We talked through it and made a plan, she would drive them in the morning, and I would pick them up at noon if things got worse.

Before agreeing to that, I called the school administration office. I asked directly whether they were really going to make us send our children to school with a significant storm threat hanging over us.

The woman on the other end said yes. They were watching the weather. If things turned, we could pick up our children around noon without an unexcused absence.

I called Cheryl back. We agreed she would take them, and I would go get them by noon.

Then I started pacing. Watching the news. Going over the plan.

I texted my friend Chrissy, asking what she thought. She told me to keep my eyes on the news and that I was welcome to bring the children to her shelter if I needed to.

The sky outside was clear and beautiful. You would never have known what was coming.

The later the morning got, the stranger everything felt.

My friend Dawn called from Michigan. She said she had a bad feeling come over her and felt like she needed to call. I told her everything. She told me to make sure I could get underground if I needed to.

I talked to Michael. I talked to my mom. I watched the news and waited for noon.

Getting to the Shelter

When noon came, I drove to the school and checked our children out. Alex looked at me like I was overreacting. I told him we were taking the steps we felt were best for our family.

Back at the house, I handed Alex the weather radio my grandmother had given us when we first moved to Oklahoma. I told him I was taking a quick shower and that if the radio changed from watch to warning, he needed to come get me immediately.

I got my hair washed.

Alex came to get me. It had changed to a warning.

I got dressed and turned on the news. The meteorologist was direct: the storm had grown. We were going to get hit, and hit hard.

He said: "If you are not underground, you are not going to make it."

I put our dog Lola in her kennel in the shower, the safest interior spot in our home. Then I grabbed my children and we got into the van. As I drove the sky looked just as beautiful as it always did, the sun was shinning and I just couldn't wrap my head around what was coming.

As I drove, I told them to put on their helmets. We were going to Chrissy's house to get in her shelter. The children were upset about leaving Lola. I explained it was the safest choice for her.

Halfway there, Michael called. He asked where I was. I told him I was almost at Chrissy's. He said get there and get in the shelter.

I was scared, but calm in a way I still cannot fully explain. Part of me still thought this might be another false alarm. It just didn't seem like a storm was close.

In the Shelter

I pulled up at Chrissy's. Her eyes were fixed on the television.

I looked at her and said, "Chrissy, talk to me."

She said she was trying to figure out what we were going to have to do.

Then the words that sent chills down my back:

"It's on the ground. We have to get in the shelter now." In the moments between parking and walking into her house the rain had started.

We ran through the rain and mud and hail, slipping and sliding out to the shelter.

After everyone was in, Chrissy got back out to watch for it. I got out with her. I took a video of the tornado coming directly toward us. She went back to try to get her mother to come in, her mom would not leave the house. Chrissy came back in, devastated.

Alex ran back to the van to grab the diaper bag for Brennan and Spencer. We had put fans and flashlights in it for exactly this reason. It was pitch dark and suffocating inside the shelter. He made it back just as Chrissy closed the door behind her.

Two seconds later, fists pounding on the door.

Chrissy opened it. A few men from the neighborhood jumped in, yelling that it was here.

The door locked.

And then the sound.

The Sound

I have tried many times to find words for it.

It was a rolling thunder that sounded like a train, not passing, but consuming. The loudest thing I have ever heard in my life. The men were hanging from the storm door, using their entire weight to keep the latch closed. Everyone was screaming. You could hear metal banging, homes being ripped apart above us.

It sounded like the tornado had picked up our vans and was beating the shelter with them.

Chrissy was screaming prayers for her mother.

I was screaming, "Make it stop."

There was an air vent in the ceiling of the shelter. I kept looking up at it.

My twelve-year-old son Alex grabbed my face.

"Mom. Don't look up."

He was holding my twelve-week-old daughter Brooke. He was blocking her from the debris shooting down through that air vent, shielding her with his own body.

I was holding Spencer, who was almost two.

My four-year-old son Brennan was sitting on the shelter floor with his friend Jaylynn. They were holding hands. Eyes closed. Silent.

The tornado was over us for less than a few minutes.

It felt like it would never stop.

It felt like being inside a vacuum, something pulling you up and dropping you back down, over and over. At one point we all genuinely believed the roof of the shelter was going to come off. I was crouched on the floor, holding Chrissy's leg, holding Spencer against me as tightly as I could.

And then — silence.

After

The men opened the door and looked out.

"It's gone. The houses are gone."

Chrissy let out a sound I will never forget. Pure terror for her mother.

The debris was still twirling in the sky when the men jumped out to find her. They brought her back from what remained of the house. She had survived in the bathroom.

I grabbed one of the men by the hand. I pleaded with him, there were children in the school down the street. When the debris settled, they ran toward it. One of them pulled two little girls from the rubble.

Chrissy and I climbed out of the shelter.

Words cannot properly describe what we walked into. I will not try to give you the full picture here. I will only tell you that the destruction was total and absolute, and that the smell of gas hit us almost immediately.

Alex climbed out and went straight into action, running to the rubble that used to be homes, listening for people and animals. He spotted a dog trapped inside what remained of a house, wrapped his hand in a shirt, broke the window, and pulled the dog out just before the ceiling collapsed.

He was twelve years old.

A man ran through with a wrench, shutting off gas lines. A fire started behind us. We moved the children to the sidewalk.

That was when I saw my van for the first time.

The tornado had picked it up and dropped it on top of a broken tree and the front of the garage. Windows shattered. The whole front end beaten. Chrissy's van had been moved several feet, every window gone, dented from whatever the storm had thrown at it.

I could not reach Michael. The phones were barely working. I kept trying, kept yelling into a phone that would not connect, kept needing him to know we were alive.

Alex came to me.

"Mom. You are yelling."

I took a breath.

People were coming from every direction. Running toward the damage. Running toward the school. I kept directing everyone I could toward Plaza Towers Elementary. I begged strangers. Please. Help the children.

Finding Each Other

Kara suddenly called out, "There's Mike."

I came around the van and saw my husband standing in the middle of the road. He was looking at what used to be Chrissy's home with a fear on his face I had never seen before.

I ran to him.

I jumped into his arms and I erupted into tears. He asked "where are the kids!" I told them they were all okay.

He held me. Then we walked back to where our children were standing.

He hugged each one of them. He rubbed their heads the way fathers do when they want their children to feel safe. He told each one he was sorry he had not been there. He told each one he loved them.

He said we had to walk, he had to park almost a mile back because of downed trees and power lines. It was not going to be an easy walk.

We walked past Plaza Towers Elementary School.

The screams of the parents trying to find their children will haunt me for the rest of my life.

The school was a pile of rubble.

We climbed over trees, over power lines. We watched first responders and news crews and ordinary people, strangers who had simply driven toward the disaster to help, running toward what used to be a school.

Every time someone saw me carrying baby Brooke, they ran up to ask if she was okay. Every time I said the same thing: We are fine. Please help the children in the school.

We made it back to Michael's car. Every road home was blocked. What would normally take seven minutes to drive home from our friends home took four hours. My sister in Michigan got through on the phone, I told her we were alive. With her and my dad on a three-way call, we drove all the way around the city, out to the lake, and back in through roads we had never been on before, not knowing the whole time whether we had a home to return to.

When we finally pulled into our neighborhood, it was untouched.

We pulled into the driveway.

I was angry that the house was still standing. Frustrated that I drove right into the tornado.

I later learned that this is called survivor's guilt. That it is a normal response. In that moment it felt like a wrongness I did not have words for.

We walked over to Cheryl's house. We hugged each other. We told each other our stories.

What the F5 Taught Me

I have thought about that day more times than I can count.

I have thought about Alex's hands on my face. About Brennan and Jaylynn on the floor holding hands with their eyes closed. About the sound that I still cannot fully describe to anyone who was not in it. About the school. About the parents.

Here is what I know:

Oklahoma will rally. Every single time.

I watched people crawl out of rubble and immediately turn to help their neighbors. Not after they assessed their own loss. Immediately. Without being asked. Without expecting anything in return.

I know now that if I am ever going to be in a natural disaster, I want it to be here. In a state full of people who are strong and know what to do and show up for each other without hesitation.

I learned that you can hide from a tornado and live to tell your story. Preparation matters. Shelters save lives. The meteorologists and news teams who warned us the day before, they gave us the time we needed to make the right decisions.

I learned something that sealed everything for our family:

After everything settled, Michael and I looked at each other and made a decision. We were going to buy a home in Oklahoma. We were going to raise our children here, with the values we had witnessed with our own eyes in the aftermath of the worst day Moore had ever seen.

Our children would grow up "Moore Strong". They would grow up knowing how to help without being asked and how to show up for their community in good times and in the hardest ones. They would be the Oklahoma Standard.

Why I Write About This Now

I am a REALTOR® in Oklahoma. I help people find homes here every single day.

When I write about tornado preparedness, or talk to a family who is nervous about moving to Oklahoma because of the weather, I am not speaking theoretically. I am speaking from the floor of a shelter with my baby in my arms and my son's hands on my face.

I respect Oklahoma weather deeply. I prepare for it seriously. I also choose, every single day, to live here and raise my family here and plant my roots deeper into this red dirt.

Home is not just a structure. It is the people who surround you when the structure is gone.

Moore taught me that. Oklahoma taught me that. I have never forgotten it.

This is my town.

With a Sprinkle of Lime… thoughtfully guiding you home.

Susan Honaker | Susan at Lime | Lime Realty 📞 405-436-3165 🌐 susanatlime.com 🌐 Oklahoma Emergency Preparedness Resource: susanatlime.com/emergency-preparedness-for-oklahoma-families

In memory of the 24 lives lost on May 20, 2013 — ten of them children. Moore Strong, always.