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| Teachers carry children away from Briarwood Elementary school after a tornado destroyed the school in south Oklahoma City, Okla, Monday, May 20, 2013. Near SW 149th and Hudson. |
MOORE, Okla.
(AP) -- The principal's voice came on over the intercom at Plaza Towers
Elementary School: A severe storm was approaching and students were to
go to the cafeteria and wait for their parents to pick them up.
But before all of the youngsters could get there, the tornado alarm sounded.
The plan changed quickly.
"All
the teachers started screaming into the room and saying, `Get into the
hallway! We don't want you to die!' and stuff like that," said
sixth-grader Phaedra Dunn. "We just took off running."
In
the moments that followed, some of the children at Plaza Towers
Elementary would, in fact, die. At least seven were killed by the
twister Monday afternoon. Others would crawl out of the rubble, bloodied
and bruised, utterly terrified.
The tornado
that devastated this Oklahoma City suburb of 56,000 people destroyed
Plaza Towers and also slammed Briarwood Elementary, where all the
children appear to have survived. Students and parents recounted stories
Tuesday of brave teachers who sheltered their pupils, in some cases by
herding them into a closet and a restroom amid the fear and panic.
After
the tornado alarm went off, students at Plaza Towers scrambled into the
halls. But the halls - some of which were within the view of windows -
did not appear safe enough.
Sixth-grader
Antonio Clark said a teacher took him and as many other youngsters as
possible and shoved them into the three-stall boys' bathroom.
"We
were all piled in on each other," the 12-year-old said. Another teacher
wrapped her arms around two students and held Antonio's hand.
Twenty seconds later he heard a roar that sounded like a stampede of elephants. His ears popped.
Then
it all stopped almost as suddenly as it started. Crouched down, his
backpack over his head, Antonio looked up. The skylight and the ceiling
were gone, and he was staring up into a cloud filled with debris.
Antonio
and a friend were among the first to stand up. They climbed over debris
where their classroom had been just moments earlier. Students and
teachers were struggling to free themselves from under the bricks,
wooden beams and insulation. Some people had bleeding head wounds; blood
covered one side of someone's eyeglasses, Antonio said.
"Everybody was crying," Antonio said. "I was crying because I didn't know if my family was OK."
Then Antonio saw his father ride up on a mountain bike, yelling his son's name.
Phaedra
survived, too. Her mother rushed to the school just moments before the
tornado hit, covered Phaedra's head with a blanket to protect her from
hail and ushered her out the door. Phaedra's 10-year-old sister, Jenna,
didn't want to budge from the school.
The
principal "grabbed her backpack, put it over her head and literally
said, `You're mom's going to open the door. Get out. You're safer with
your mom,' and pushed her out the door," said Amy Sharp, the girls'
mother.
At Briarwood Elementary, the students
also went into the halls. But a third-grade teacher didn't think it
looked safe, so she herded some of the children into a closet, said
David Wheeler, one of the fathers who tried to rush to the school after
the tornado hit.
The teacher shielded
Wheeler's 8-year-old son, Gabriel, with her arms and held him down as
the tornado collapsed the school roof and starting lifting students
upward with a pull so strong that it literally sucked glasses off kids'
faces, Wheeler said.
"She saved their lives by putting them in a closet and holding their heads down," Wheeler said.
Gabriel
and the teacher - whom Wheeler identified as Julie Simon - had to dig
their way out of the rubble. The boy's back was cut and bruised and
gravel was embedded in his head, Wheeler said. It took nearly three
hours for father and son to be reunited.
Other parents waited even longer, as they drove from one emergency shelter to another in search of their children.
At
St. Andrews United Methodist Church, 15-year-old Caitlin Ulrey waited
about seven hours before her parents found her. Her high school had not
been hit by the tornado. But her nerves were frayed.
"I was starting to panic and shake and have an anxiety attack," Caitlin said.
At
Plaza Towers, several students were pulled alive from under a collapsed
wall and other heaps of mangled debris. Rescue workers passed the
survivors down a human chain of parents and neighborhood volunteers.
Parents carried dazed and terrified children in their arms to a triage
center in the parking lot.
Hundreds of Oklahoma schools have reinforced tornado shelters, but not the two that were hit on Monday.
Albert
Ashwood, director of the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management,
said it is up to each jurisdiction to set priorities for which schools
get funding for safe rooms. But he said a shelter would not necessarily
have saved more lives at Plaza Towers. The tornado was an EF5 twister,
the most powerful type, with winds of at least 200 mph.
"When
you talk about any kind of safety measures ... it's a mitigating
measure, it's not an absolute," Ashwood said. "There's not a guarantee
that everyone will be totally safe."
Moore
School Superintendent Susan Pierce said teachers and administrators put
their well-rehearsed crisis plan into action as the tornado approached.
But she suggested there are limits to what people can do in the face of
such a powerful storm.
"Safety is our main
priority," Pierce said. "We monitored the weather throughout the day and
when it was time to shelter, we did just that."
