Previous | Next :: Safe Embrace : Moore Tornado : Oklahoma | May 22, 2013, 2:57 pm

Its 2AM ........... I am just about to start sleeping in the car....... In an open car park at a service area on the I40 just outside Oklahoma City ..... I didn't try very hard to get a motel ......... I feel like anyone who has lost their home in this terrible twister deserves a bed more than I do ......... and anyway as soon as it is light I will be shooting ............ So I can sleep in the car easily enough .... and because this day has been just so terrible for so very many people I don't feel like complaining about my lot ......... I am listening to a mix of local news and to the BBC world service ..... right now 91 people are confirmed dead after the terrible F5 tornado strike ............. including a large number of young children who died when their school was destroyed .......... so sad ........ so absolutely terrible ....... Horrific for the families that have lost their children.......... I just cannot bear to think of it...............

Sleeping in the car is not really the safest thing to do if there are tornadoes ......... I am sleeping a few hundred yards from where the land has been scarred the buildings and vehicles destroyed the trees shredded and flattened ......... Im thinking there cannot be more twisters surely? But then as I was walking to the cafe across the open tarmac......... the sky appears to be almost purple as it is lit up by streaking lightening............ there is still no rain ....... but the sky feels to still be full of a heavy brooding power ...............

Scores of huge earth moving vehicles are arriving here.......... this is obviously a staging post for recovery folks and their equipment .......... as well as the odd scruffy photographer sleeping in his clothes.

Cheers Jez XXX

Next day :

I wrote this above the night of the Tornado......... but it weirdly did not post .......... So luckily the official death toll was significantly downgraded overnight............... it now stands at 24 ........ Terrible obviously but not as bad as was first thought and being reported ................ The folks in the photo above were back to see what they could salvage from their destroyed family home the next day .......... Thankfully all of their family survived ......... Amazingly even all of their cats and dogs ........... so they felt lucky even though the house and all the contents were completely destroyed.

Cheers Jez XXXXX