Neighbors recount moments they barely survived late-night EF-3 tornado
OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) – People in an Oklahoma City neighborhood ravaged by an EF-3 tornado worked to pick up the pieces Sunday, hours after they all—somehow—managed to make it through the storm alive.
Numerous homes in a neighborhood near SE 89th Street and Sooner Road in Oklahoma City were leveled when an EF-3 tornado struck their homes as they slept early Sunday morning.
“We've never gotten hit,” homeowner Jackie Shaver told News 4 Sunday afternoon.
“And this is just unbelievable.”
‘Unbelievable’—says shaver—that she and her neighbors made it out alive, despite the storm nearly leveling their homes to the foundation.
“Everything can be replaced,” Shaver said. “I can't replace my neighbors and my family.”
Most people in the neighborhood News 4 spoke with said the storm came through with little to no warning—while they slept.
“The roof was literally being ripped off while we were in bed,” homeowner Dustin Gregg told News 4.
The storm blew in so fast, Gregg and his family did not have time to get into their home’s storm shelter.
“We got up, rushed in to try to get to the shelter in the garage, and we didn't even make it,” he said.
Kevin Tran, a 16-year-old foreign exchange student from Vietnam was also asleep when the tornado hit, and ripped the roof and all the walls off his bedroom.
“Everything was gone,” Tran said. “By the time I woke up the wall by the side and my front window wall was gone.”
The tornado launched a large pickup truck in the air. The truck landed just a few feet away from Tran’s bedroom.
“It is way worse than in the movies,” Tran said.
Across the street from Tran’s house, shaver and her husband, rode out the storm out in a hallway.
“It sounded like a locomotive,” Shaver said. “It was like WHOOSH! WHOOSH! It was horrific. And then the whistling of the winds and everything started flying. And then it's just like, oh, is this really happening?”
The gravity of what she and her neighbors survived was only just beginning to set in Sunday afternoon.
“It’s kind of hard to pack up 27 years in a day, but we’re doing it,” Shaver said.
She says, the fact that she and her neighbors are even still alive to clean up what’s left, is nothing short of a miracle.
“I'm just thankful to God to be here,” she said.