AP photographer sees kids pulled from Okla. school
May 21, 2013, 8:50 PM
MOORE, Okla. (AP) – I left the office in Oklahoma City as soon as I saw the tornado warnings on TV. I had photographed about a dozen twisters in the past decade, and knew that if I didn’t get in my car before the funnel cloud hit, it would be too late.
By the time I reached Moore, all I could see was destruction. I walked toward a group of people standing by a heaping mound of rubble too big to be a home. There were a lot of kids lined up on the sidewalk. A woman told me it had been a school.
I expected chaos as I approached the piles of bricks and twisted metal where Plaza Towers Elementary once stood. Instead, it was calm and orderly as police and firefighters pulled children out one by one from beneath a large chunk of a collapsed wall.
Parents and neighborhood volunteers stood in a line and passed the rescued children from one set of arms to another, carrying them out of harm’s way. Adults carried the children through a field littered with shredded pieces of wood, cinder block and insulation to a triage center in a parking lot.
They worked quickly and quietly so rescuers could try to hear voices of children trapped beneath the rubble.
Crews lifted one boy from under the wall and were about to pass him along the human chain, but his dad was there. As the boy called out for him, they were reunited.
In the 30 minutes that I was outside the destroyed school, I photographed about a dozen children pulled from the rubble.
I focused my lens on each one of them. Some looked dazed. Some cried. Others seemed terrified.
But they were alive.
I know that some students were among those who died in the tornado, but for a moment, there was hope in the devastation.
___
Watch the AP video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?vvpHFN5wtSDc
___
AP Photographer Sue Ogrocki has worked in Oklahoma for more than 10 years where she has covered about a dozen tornadoes.
(Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)
