By: Rabbi Yaakov Rosenblatt, assistant regional director of Southwest NCSY
The cars lined up outside Yavneh Academy at 6:25AM on Sunday, May 23. We davened at 6:30 and were on the road, after a quick breakfast of cereal and milk, by 7:30 AM. We had seven cars or minivans, some driven by NCSY leaders, some by Yavneh teachers and some by parents.
In total, 38 people woke up at dawn on Sunday morning and headed for US Highway 35 for the three-hour drive to tornado-hit Moore, Oklahoma.
Dallas is at the bottom of Tornado Alley, an area that spans the Midwest states of South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. On Monday May 20, an EF5 tornado with peak winds estimated at 210 mph struck Moore, Oklahoma, killing 24 people, including 10 children, decimated two schools and destroyed hundreds of homes. A two-mile wide funnel sat on the ground for close to forty minutes and cleared a 17-mile swath of destruction.
Regional NCSY Director Rabbi Israel Lashak called us to action. “We must be there, helping, as soon as we can,” he said. We contacted Chabad of OKC which arranged for us to volunteer at a local Red Cross station. We drove to the station, located in Norman, OK, home of the University of Oklahoma, where we signed in. They gave us canned goods and water to distribute to needy families.
NCSYers and other volunteers loaded canned food and bottled water to distribute to needy families hit by the tornado.
Rabbis of Chabad of Oklahoma City met us at the Red Cross location, including team leader Rabbi Berel Namdar. Together, now a caravan of eight cars and vans, we made our way to some of the hardest hit parts of town.
Only a picture can fully describe the devastation we saw. At times it was total. We would see concrete slabs which once held homes, surrounded by debris scattered over a few acres. Some homes were partially destroyed, with owners draping tarps over their open roofs to keep rain out. At one house, we were shown the storm shelter, no larger than 8’ x 8’ that held 18 people for the duration of the storm. The owner said the wind was pulling at the steel door and had it blown off the people within might have been sucked out.
That same individual said that his bathroom, generally considered a safe place to be during a tornado because of its small windows and limited external exposure, received a direct hit from a two by four which crashed through the wall and might have killed anyone in it, had they been taking there. The flying debris, propelled at incredible speeds, became missiles which destroyed anything in their path.
We met an elderly couple now living in a mobile home parked on property that had been their homestead for decades. A cadre of volunteers was clearing rubble from their lot, bringing what had been a home to the front of their property for disposal. I picked up a bathroom scissors from the mud, a stainless steel survivor of destruction that made almost everything unsalvageable.
We distributed food to needy families and went to work clearing rubble, as best as we could.
“It was an important experience for the teens of our community” said Rabbi Michel Lomner, Director of Programming at NCSY Dallas. “We made a difference in people’s lives and a Kiddush Hashem, too.”
NCSYers had the opportunity to provide strength and comfort to community members.
We spent a lot of time at a new development that was largely destroyed. We filled wheel-barrels with loose bricks and crumbled sheetrock and made piles near the street. One of our teens found, in the rubble, a family picture and gave it to the couple who owned it. They were standing on the concrete slab that had once been their home, speaking to an insurance adjuster. When we scraped the tiles from the area that had been the kitchen floor, it removed the last semblance of domesticity from what had been their home.
After a full day of work we went to Chabad of Oklahoma City. Rabbi and Mrs. Ovadia Goldman, who lead Chabad of OKC and have built a beautiful Jewish center, prepared a lavish spread of hamburgers, frankfurters, salads and desserts for two score hungry and tired volunteers. We offer our appreciation to Chabad of OKC for organizing the effort and so generously providing dinner.
We headed back to Dallas at about 5pm, arriving home about 8:00 PM.
Valerie Lopez, Southwest NCSYer, spent the first Sunday after the tornado cleaning up debris.
NCSYers work together to help clean up Moore, Oklahoma.