Resiliency and Reconstruction: Moore residents rebuild their community with outside help

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class Jelani Gibson
  • 82nd Training Wing Public Affairs
SHEPPARD AIR FORCE BASE, Texas --  For the residents of Moore, Okla., the tornado that ripped through their community May 20 left a sense of tragedy in its wake.

According to the National Weather Service, the storm had winds over 200 mph, was 1.3 miles wide, caused an estimated $2 billion worth of damage, killed more than 20 people and was rated as an EF-5, the highest rating a tornado can possibly receive.

For the community of Moore its diverse mixture of residents came together in an effort to begin rebuilding their community in the aftermath.

"Our whole neighborhood was wiped out," said retired Maj. John Sandifer, a former Air Force weather officer. "It was just a big shock."

Sandifer, who took refuge in a storm shelter located at the bottom of his car garage, remembers the sound and menace of the tornado with clarity.

"It sounded like a train," he said. "There was this roaring wind and shingles were flying like shrapnel."

When Sandifer and his family emerged from the shelter their house was intact, but they were greeted by scenes of destruction as they looked upon the homes of their neighbors, whose houses walls and roofs were caved in by the havoc wreaked upon the community by the tornado. It was then that they knew it would be a long journey to recovery.

For those who were in charge of disaster relief, they found helping out was a daunting, but rewarding task.

"You feel for the people in the storm," said Paul Spinka, a site management specialist for Samaritan's Purse, a Christian non-profit from Boon, N.C., which does disaster relief through local churches. "Our prime purpose is to serve Christ."

"This is a talent I feel I can excel at," he said.

There were other volunteers who saw the clean-up efforts as a way to help people cope.

"It's sad to see a lot of this devastation," said Joseph Morrison, a chaplain from York, S.C., and retired military intelligence analyst for the U.S. Army. "To bring hope to families is encouraging."

Morrison views the aftermath as an opportunity to bring a sense well-being to the residents.

"We're helping them get back to a sense of normalcy,"he said.

He believes that the act of helping others was the most important aspect of what he does.

"People don't care about what they hear, they care about what they see," he said.

For others, coming home to devastation was part of the bigger task of rebuilding. Jason Sylvester, a contractor who worked in Afghanistan as a counter Improvised Explosive Device analyst, got the message about his home being destroyed while he was deployed at 2 a.m via e-mail from his landlord.

"I just got back from Afghanistan," Sylvester said. "I've seen worse."

Coming from a war zone that saw its fair share of destruction as well, Sylvester also holds an appreciation for the first responders who helped with the tornado clean-up.

"Thank god we have the sort of infrastructure in this country required to handle this sort of thing," Sylvester said.

For the nearly 13,000 homes destroyed in the twister's 17-mile path, reconstruction efforts are on-going around the clock. There is no set timetable for when the rebuilding will be complete, but the residents of Moore will not stop until it is complete.