Not again.
Oklahoma residents are familiar with the sound of a tornado siren, the brazen noise becoming almost a ritual every April-June.
But in March?
Twisters struck Wednesday (March 25) just outside Tulsa as well as an all too familiar territory, Moore, Oklahoma—the site of an EF5 tornado in 2013 that killed 24, including 10 children, seven at Plaza Towers Elementary School.
Within 24 hours, the Billy Graham Rapid Response Team had deployed chaplains to Oklahoma, just outside Tulsa in the suburb of Sand Springs, where a mobile home park was annihilated by the storm, killing one older gentleman.
“It looks like a debris field,” said Al New, manager of deployment and operations for the Billy Graham Rapid Response Team. “There’s nothing standing. Homes flipped upside down. Insulation everywhere. Scattered sheet metal. I’d say 98 percent of the trailers are totally destroyed.”
Since 1950, there have been 76 tornadoes reported in the Tulsa area, claiming 29 lives. Moore, a suburb of Oklahoma City, may be the heart of tornado alley, as Wednesday marked the 10th tornado since 1998.
“Tornadoes are a devastating act of Mother Nature that Oklahomans are all too familiar with,” Oklahoma Insurance Commissioner John Doak told Weather.com.
A total of eight crisis-trained chaplains from Oklahoma and Texas will be in Sand Springs to share the hope of Christ, helping wherever they can with “spiritual and emotional care,” New said.
The Rapid Response Team will also sett up its Mobile Command Center as close to the damaged areas as they can get—road permitting—to give the community a place to recharge with a cup of coffee or cold water, share concerns, or receive prayer.
“There’s a lot of devastation, especially in the mobile park area, but there’s several other houses in the area that are damaged,” New said. “We just want to be a ministry of presence.”
