Some people think that for whatever reason we're cursed when it comes to tornadoes, but mathematically the odds say we will survive.

The first siren I remember hearing was probably 45 minutes before the actual tornado.

(siren) And there was just something different.

I could feel it in the air and we're standing there staring at these clouds that I had never seen before or since.

That was the first sign I had that something was not going to be good that day.

(calm music) They actually caught the beginning of the formation on video.

So we were watching it live.

My wife comes in and I tell her, "If we're going to have trouble it's going to be the one they're showing right now."

Sure enough, it made a beeline for the street.

Probably the overwhelming sensation was powerlessness.

You can't move your house out of the way of a tornado.

We at the time didn't have a storm shelter.

The traditional solution for that is to get in the bathtub.

My mother in law was there.

If it was just me, I couldn't fit my legs in the bathtub.

With them that would be an impossibility.

Very shortly after that I got the impression we needed to leave.

Now weathermen here tell us the worst possible thing we can do in a tornado or storm situation is to leave in your car.

Fortunately, that was what we did.

I remember backing out of the driveway and I took an extra moment to look at the house.

I just knew that there was a good chance I was going to come home to something different than what I was leaving.

I just wanted to be able to remember it.

(stiffled sobbing) I knew where the storms were and was able to basically just drive in a circle around the tornado, behind the tornado, and back into our neighborhood.

We knew there would be hurt people.

Possibly could be people who were killed.

My wife started at one end of the street.

I started at the other.

We kind of met here at our house.

If you can imagine a half mile of where I'm standing on either side, it was devastation.

There was three cars on top of what was left of our house.

It literally looked like an atom bomb had gone off.

It was just gone, everything.

We were at a pretty low point.

There was a period of time we considered moving, but when it got down to it, my thinking was, "I'm not going to let that tornado make me go anywhere."

So we actually live on the very same lot that our home was destroyed on.

My wife was not going to live in a house where ever again that didn't have a storm shelter.

Unfortunately, they don't really make them roomy for guys my size, but it's better than nowhere at all.

(laughs) Nothing strengthens the sense of community more I think, than a shared disaster.

May 20th tornado for me really strengthened my sense of community because the community showed up.

For the first time in my adult life I really felt a part of a community that felt a part of me.

(calm music) Oklahoma is my home.

This is where my family and the people who love me and I love are.

We become familiar with the things around us, the buildings around us, but some day one day those buildings aren't going to be there.

What May 20th taught me was is that it can happen over night.

It's not a form of urban renewal I would advise people to take, but that is one of the things that happened.

We are very resilient people.

You can knock us down but we're going to get back up.

The state of Oklahoma goes on.

There's not a tornado big enough to stop that.

(calming music)