God Bless The People Of Moore, Oklahoma

My heart is saddened by the news out of Moore, Oklahoma.  Not only did so many people die but many of them were children, trapped in a school where they should have been safe.  I don’t fault the school, or the staff, or any person for the children’s demise.  In an F5 tornado, or even a strong F4, there are very few safe places to be.  Unless they’re under ground, brick, concrete and steel are no match for winds of 200+ miles per hour.  The elementary school where the children died demonstrated that very well.

During my years in Puerto Rico and Miami I experienced numerous hurricanes; some with devastating force.  But I can tell you very easily I’d rather live through a hurricane than a tornado any day.  With modern weather prediction technology, with few exceptions they can predict how strong it will be, where it will hit and what we can expect.  I even got to the point where I could look at the animated radar, the air circulation, the high and low pressure systems and pretty accurately predict where the storm would go.  It became a hobby.

Tornadoes are completely unpredictable – except for the fact that they can look at weather radar and predict that there could be a tornado in a specific area.  The predictions have become somewhat better but they are still just predictions, not accurate forecasts.

Tornadoes come down from the clouds when they decide to.  They stay on the ground as long as they want to and dissipate when they’re ready.  Hurricanes at least are predictable, not only their path but how and when they will most likely dissipate due to changing conditions, terrain, etc.  Give me the hurricane any time.

As a father who has lost a child, I can also feel empathy for the parents who are grieving for their children tonight. It’s difficult enough to lose a child who has been sick and isn’t expected to survive.  To lose a child suddenly, particularly to a traumatic event, with no warning and no preparation is far worse. 

I also feel for the first responders who had to go and find everyone they could who was still alive, transport them to area hospitals, and then go back and look for the dead.  Sometimes people don’t realize that first responders have to deal with death almost daily.  As a former paramedic in the Air Force, I can tell you that dealing with death on a regular basis can make you cold hearted.  One can easily get to the point where life or death doesn’t matter as much as whether or not you did everything correctly.  It’s easy to forget that the victims you’re working on are people, with families and lives of their own.  It can make you cold.  That’s one of the reasons I didn’t pursue a career as a paramedic when I left the Air Force.

May God bless the victims and the families of the victims in Oklahoma.  They are living a hell on Earth.  They need prayer and intervention – and people who have not been so hardened by tragedy that they don’t much care anymore.