Prayers for Moore, Oklahoma
My point: If you can't be down there to help pull people from rubble or rebuild that community, just give money, its the next best thing.
Thoughts and prayers.
My God, I'm late to this, but speechless.
Thoughts and prayers from the bottom of my heart.
I'm not smart enough to calculate the odds of two F5 tornadoes hitting the same area twice, but given that there have only been 58 (perhaps 59 now) F5s since 1950, yeah, they should just declare such areas no-build zones. Those folks living in the Beecher area of north Flint better watch out. They must be due another F5 any time now.
I live in the Edmond/Oklahoma City year - moved here about 4 years ago. It seems as if every "devastating" tornado that has hit the metro area since I've lived here carved a path right through Moore. Not growing up here but living here long enough to know a bit about Oklahoma's tornado history, I would never move to Moore. It's just one big bullseye.
On a side note in talks of damage/lives lost, Moore had about a 20 minute heads up that the tornado was coming. News feeds and weather updates are heavy and frequent in this area when it comes to tornadoes, and my crew at work was already watching the TV even before the tornado hit outside of Moore. Almost everyone should have known it was on its way, and more than likely 100+ lives will be lost from this one tornado. Back in the day, they had no warnings; if they weren't looking up in the sky, they probably had no clue one was coming. I feel that if we still lived in that age today, the lives lost today would have been WAY worse - possibly hitting that #1 spot for most lives lost. The damage from this thing is unbelievable. Everyone who lives in this area can feel this one, and we all know someone who this has affected. It's just crazy.
As far as the no build thing goes, I don't know how.you make a statistical case supporting that policy given tornadoes unpredictability.
Yeah, they are going to rebuild. Moore generally has lower property taxes and a much cheaper cost of living than a community like Edmond north of OKC. It also doesn't have the crime of South OKC, so people tend to like the area more for those reasons.
Now rebuilding a house 5 times on the coast because hurricanes/surge keep knocking it down is just stupid and I would agree with you.
However, forcasting tornadoes is a crap shoot at best, just think about how many "warnings" Michigan gets yet we never see anything come of it. Saying you cant build there is asinine, unless you want to make the entire Plains area off limits, as it is literally a 1 in a (insert large number) chance of happening again. The fact of the matter is, is that the topography of the Plains lends itself to the formation of these super cells and there ain't a damn thing you can do about it.
Having went through my first tornado scare last year, and in speaking to coworkers, this is just a fact of life down here that everyone accepts and hopes it never hits them.
Prayers are nice gestures...but money is what will ultimately help these people attempt to rebuild their lives. The lucky ones are the ones that might have lost all of their personal property but no family members (or pets) -- houses can be rebuilt.
This makes the "severe" hail storm my neighborhood went through a few weeks back look like absolutely nothing at all. I feel kinda guilty now, I admit, for bitching and moaning about that. I have absolutely nothing to complain about. NOTHING.
I think tragedies like these just put things in perspective as far as priorities. Not just as far as the difference between a new roof and a new house, but also the difference between having a family who's alive and safe and losing a loved one. As you said, houses can be rebuilt, but you can't replace a child/mother/friend. I think the best thing to do in situations like these is to count our blessings, and instead of complaining about the little things in life that seem to not be going our way, find joy in what we've been blessed with and try to learn to not take those blessings for granted.
After things like this happen, I do find myself complaining about the little things a helluva lot less -- at least for a while. I just wish that sentiment would stick with me longer than it does.