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

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

And there was just something different.

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

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

(Calm music with wind chimes) They actually caught the beginning of the formation on video, so we were watching it live.

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

And sure enough, it made a beeline for the street.

Probably the overwhelming sensation was powerlessness.

You know, 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.

But 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 this tornado 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 gonna come home to something different than what I was leaving.

And I just wanted to be able to remember it.

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.

And 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 gonna 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 forever again that didn't have a storm shelter.

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

(Chuckles) 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.

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 someday, one day, those buildings aren't gonna be there.

What May 20th taught me was, is that can happen overnight.

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

We're very resilient You can knock us down, but we're gonna get back up.

And the state of Oklahoma goes on!

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

(Calm Music)