I emailed, and still have received no response, but I want to say that Sooner just got FEMA qualified or something like that (I may be mis-remembering, and hopefully Anne Laurie can give some more info), but what I do know about the guy is he is a 20 year vet and the kind of guy who rushes into crisis situations while others run the other way, so I am just crossing my fingers and hoping he is out doing what comes naturally to him, which is helping people out when they need it the most.
This is where you religious folks pray for his and his family’s safety.
raven
I posted it on the tornado thread but I’ll post it again:
So he is from near Norman but has family in the area Cole is right, if there is any way he is there helping.
Hill Dweller
The OK medical examiner says there are 37 fatalities, but the total is sure to rise.
raven
@Hill Dweller: The report on one of the schools is bad, it’s gone to a recovery op.
MikeJ
@raven: Norman is just south of Moore and north or Pauls Valley, where they were tracking a separate tornado earlier.
cathyx
He’s probably just without power.
raven
@MikeJ: Right.
jl
OK, first comment was comforting. I will hope he and his family are OK.
raven
@cathyx: His connectivity was shaky this morning, I’m sure it’s nonexistent now.
raven
@jl: I posted that as a confirmation of his location, the post was from 2011.
burnspbesq
On it.
geg6
Been worried about him all day. Hope all is well and that he’s out being a mensch by helping everyone he can.
Terrible weather out there. When will this country take climate change seriously? I know, I know…a country that accepts the installation of C+ Augustus has demonstrated a complete and utter lack of the ability to take anything seriously.
MikeJ
A tune for Oklahoma: (no wind sweeping down the plain in this one)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dm6qw_yeo6o
Svensker
His post this morning said he was without power and had only occasional internet.
Praying for everybody. Dang.
JPL
@raven: What we don’t know is where he built his new home.
in canaduh
Fuck you , you americans have to finally learn to let go of that religious crap. Its really embarassing. I hope whoever does well at whatever but prayer? Eat a sack of dicks, get an education
raven
@in canaduh: Fuck off hose headed moron.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@in canaduh: so the thing about Canadians all being nice or polite, or mentally fit, is bullshit?
Svensker
@in canaduh:
Excuse me?
And “duh” seems quite appropriate.
Carnacki
He posted he was ok on Facebook, but he had not heard from all of his family. I’m hoping everyone is ok
burnspbesq
@in canaduh:
The famous Canadian tolerance and respect on display for all to see. Nice to know who really believes in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and who pisses on it when it becomes inconvenient.
eemom
Seconded — and nicely said, Cole.
I’m not an atheist, but I’m not a praying person either, or one to “send healing thoughts.” So it’s hard to know what to say at a time like this.
Omnes Omnibus
@in canaduh: Derf?
burnspbesq
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
It could just be the result of too many years playing box lacrosse without a helmet.
JPL
@Carnacki: thank you
Roger Moore
@in canaduh:
Obvious troll is obvious.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
Only somewhat off-topic, thanks to the Canadian idiot, but I’m really loving Troll-B-Gone right now. I clicked to block the troll, and all of the responses to him collapsed as well.
Yay for SG and Facebook.
Poopyman
What I blithely posted on the last thread a few minutes ago:
BTW, I see that the VA hospital is about 8 miles north of Moore, so if Soonergrunt was at work he was well out of the way. And I would hope he would do the logical thing and build his home close to his work. I hope.
I know his father and sister are farther south, though, so good luck to them. And to all in OK tonight.
mapaghimagsik
Not the praying type myself.can I buy em a scratcher?
Statistically, it’s prolly a better bet. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
The Dangerman
@eemom:
Lighting a candle is always good (unless it’s a stinky one, of course).
Comrade Mary
Canadian agnostic here. I’m fine with sincere religious people who aren’t trying to hurt other people.
Hope Sooner and family are OK. I’m thinking of them.
Poopyman
Ooooh, the KFOR weatherguy just said the tornado was 2 1/4 miles wide.
Oy.
raven
I’m not crazy about the religious stuff but it doesn’t bother me. What did bother me was a 72 year old guy they had on and it was all “the lord this, the lord that, I’m fine, everything I have is the lord’s”. So these people thing they, individually, get chosen to live and others get chosen to die?
Poopyman
@Poopyman: … And he says debris from Moore, OK is now falling as the storm moves through Arkansas.
Oy.
Poopyman
Interesting that the ad at the top of the page is for the DSTRESS line, courtesy of the USMC.
Cliff in NH
Safe and Well
The American Red Cross Safe and Well Website is a way for people affected by a disaster to enter information regarding their welfare so family and friends can check their status. Because people self-register, the Red Cross cannot verify the information and is not responsible for any inaccuracies.
This page provides two options for searching the list of those who have registered themselves as “safe and well.” The results of a successful search will only display your loved one’s First Name, Last Name, an “As of Date”, and the messages they posted. The fields marked with a red star * are required fields.
You must first enter a name and then choose either Option 1 or Option 2 to begin your search.
Poopyman
BTW, the livestream for the NBC affiliate, KFOR can be found here.
But I don’t recommend linking if you’re addicted to disaster porn.
eemom
k, never mind what I said about not praying. O Lord, why hast thou smote upon us the Seven Plagues of Troll?
Villago Delenda Est
Odds are good that Sooner can’t communicate with us, because of storm damage.
All we can do is plead with FSM to protect Sooner and his family.
Calming Influence
Glad to hear he wasn’t in the path of that motherfucker. My guess is that a lot of people who’s lives have been turned upside-down today will be better off tomorrow because of Sooner’s efforts.
I’m sending some money to the Red Cross, but if anyone knows where funds could be put to more immediate use, give a shout.
trollhattan
@Poopyman:
The heli video doesn’t lie, the debris paths are enormous and stretch to the horizon in some shots. These were as big as such storms can get and they hit populated areas. Damage and death will be similar to a severe hurricane.
Comrade Mary
@raven: People like that can go FUCK themselves.
Hate them, hate them hate them. How many parents are mourning their children and a jumped up little fuck like that gets to preen that GOD LOVES HIM BEST and saved him for some godfucking miraculous reason while those kids — well, God is mysterious BUT I’M ALIVE, LORD, YOU ARE SO GENEROUS.
Really, FUCK those people.
(And in case anyone tries “Hey, the heat of the moment, maybe he didn’t realize what that sounds like.” Fuck NO. NO excuse. Fuckers.)
raven
@Poopyman: We get it, you are going to make a point over and over that you think news reports from a disaster are PORN. SO why don’t you do something else?
opie_jeanne
“This is where you religious folks pray for his and his family’s safety”
Even some of us who are no longer very religious.
Villago Delenda Est
@Calming Influence:
Um, that was the one from two years ago.
No report so far from Sooner as to today’s excitement.
Yatsuno
@in canaduh: Snarf off hoser. Yer embarrassing my ancestors.
@Carnacki: I count that as a very very good thing. Hope he gets in contact wigh his loved ones soon and that all is well.
Elizabelle
When they rebuild those suburbs, I wonder if they could put a multifamily concrete shelter every half block or so. Could share the cost.
I hope we will see a good discussion about building safer. And Moore’s had 15 tornadoes in past 20 years? Do they rebuild large if risk is higher in some neighborhoods?
raven
@Villago Delenda Est: I guess I shouldn’t have posted it even though I had the date on it.
Baud
@Villago Delenda Est:
That’s what I think also.
pat
Rachel Maddow, 51 killed, 120 injured, a tornado even bigger than in 1999.
Gravenstone
@Omnes Omnibus: And with the pie filter not cooperating, either.
Roger Moore
@Gravenstone:
Cleek has a version that’s updated to work with the new site. Get it now!
Karen in GA (who really needs a better name)
I’m not a praying person myself. But here’s hoping he and his are okay.
I didn’t realize that last huge tornado that hit Moore was 14 years ago — it doesn’t seem like that long. Sadly, though, it’s not long enough. I’m sure there are plenty of people in Moore who feel like it was just last week, and now they have to deal with it again.
A nasty, unfair world we live in.
Richard Fox
I have had such an odd reaction to this terrible news. Being a New York boy at first my reaction was ‘Hell they screwed us with voting against Sandy relief; they elect utter fools; why should I have sympathy?’ Then of course my eyes open and take in the utter horror of it, the lost lives and lost property.. and at the end it is the same no matter what. We’re just people caught in forces beyond our control or reckoning, no matter where or who. Can’t feel anything but sadness and wish to donate funds to the Red Cross. And hope the big bad government helps these folks back on their feet. What an awful, awful tragedy.
Calming Influence
@Villago Delenda Est: Well fuck fuck fuck tornad-fucking-oes.
Give blood.
Calming Influence
All children accounted for at Briarwood Elementary.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Roger Moore:
Quite a few of us can’t get the updated version to work.
Troll B Gone is working for me.
Baud
@Calming Influence:
Good news! And amazing.
raven
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: That IS the new version.
JWL
I worked alongside a FEMA qualified inspector (the guy had an engineering degree). He told me that other inspectors he knew began licking their chops when hurricanes began to form in the Caribbean, in expectation of making money should one clobber the U.S. mainland. If memory serves, he was sent to Puerto Rico after that island got nailed in [circa 1990]. Apparently the inspectors (or whatever they’re called) are expected to work long, hard hours, but are paid pretty well for their service.
raven
@JWL: Oh yea, I have a buddy with a PhD in Geology and he rakes it in working for them.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@raven: *confused* Troll B Gone was based on Cleek’s script, but it isn’t his pie filter.
lojasmo
“Always look for the helpers”
-Fred Rogers
Sooner is out helping. We are the last thing on his mind.
raven
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: aha, well I still can’t get it to work.
Higgs Boson's Mate
Hoping that soonergrunt is well and dealing with a real life situation. That last may be more important to him at the moment. He is my brother because we’ve both been shot at.
JPL
@Calming Influence: Not so much from Plaza Tower Elem. Sch.
Baud
Tragedies can’t stop the Twitter machine:
YellowJournalism
Glad to hear Sooner is okay. Positive thoughts to his family and friends.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@raven: Well, fewmets.
Ash Can
@Richard Fox: Aye, there’s the rub. I wouldn’t wish this horror on anyone, even them, but the fact is, their comfortably padded asses are sitting many miles away from the catastrophe, while their grassroots, regular-folk, parents-and-children, people-just-trying-to-make-their-way-in-life constituents are the ones taking it in the teeth. Someone in an earlier thread said that the reps from the area whacked by Sandy should spearhead the effort to get federal relief to Oklahoma, as a pointed response to the sheer schmuckishness of the “representatives” of the poor people who need help now.
Ash Can
@Baud: I’m sure his constituents will be delighted to hear that.
Baud
@Ash Can:
If history is any guide, what they’ll hear is that it’s all Obama’s fault.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Baud:
Okay. Take the money out of the defense budget. I’m cool with that.
Elie
Poem by Tennessee Williams:
Your Blinded Hand.
Suppose that
everything that greens and grows
should blacken in one moment, flower and branch.
I think that I would find your blinded hand.
Suppose that your cry and mine were lost among numberless cries
in a city of fire when the earth is afire,
I must still believe that somehow I would find your blinded hand.
Through flames everywhere
consuming earth and air
I must believe that somehow, if only one moment were offered,
I would
find your hand.
I know as, of course, you know
the immeasurable wilderness that would exist
in the moment of fire.
But I would hear your cry and you’d hear mine and each of us
would find
the other’s hand.
We know
that it might not be so.
But for this quiet moment, if only for this
moment,
and against all reason,
let us believe, and believe in our hearts,
that somehow it would be so.
I’d hear your cry, you mine—
And each of us would find a blinded hand.
raven
@Ash Can: I don’t like him but, unlike a lot of those scumbags, I would expect him to stick to his principles.
Baud
@raven:
It’s not principled unless he’s going to propose cutting something he cares about that no one else does.
Richard Fox
@Ash Can: That would be an excellent thing to do. I am going to write my congress critter on this point. Great idea, Ash Can. Thanks for sending that my way.
BGinCHI
Hope Cole will update on the front page when we get some news.
Shit looks bad and I hope sooner is ok.
JWL
@raven: As I recall having being been told, they “rake it in” by being paid a respectable hourly wage, while being expected to work damn near ’round the clock (in the neighborhood of 18 hour days). Which sounds to me like a reasonable, proper bargain for the feds (that is, We the taxpayers) to extend those people.
raven
@Baud: It’s a lot closer than most of those boobs will ever get.
raven
@JWL: Uh huh. I’m father Flannigan from Boys Town. The dude does have a PhD from Vady so he should be paid handsomely for his expertise.
Baud
@raven:
Yeah, but that’s damn low bar to clear.
raven
@Baud: I get your transmission 5X5.
trollhattan
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
Take it out of oil and gas subsidies.
aimai
@Elie: Wow. Thank you so much for posting that. I’m in tears.
Frivolous
Really hope Soonergrunt and his family are okay.
JWL
@raven: The Father Flannigan reference does not compute (I do know about Boy’s Town). I’ve also no clue what you mean by a “degree from Vady”.
I can only assume you consider Fema people to be a waste of taxpayer money. If so, I deem you to be an idiot.
fuckwit
@Richard Fox: NO NO NO. These forces are ABSOLUTELY WITHIN OUR CONTROL. We are deliberately fucking up the planet, creating these kinds of mega-disasters. New York may be using up a lot of energy resources, but Oklahoma keeps voting against solving the problem.
So, yeah, I feel bad for them on a human level. On a political level, though, I can only say “I told you so, and so did Al Gore and the entire scientific field, and you mocked them, so I hope you’re enjoying the results”.
I don’t pray for anything. But I sincerely hope the science-denying morons among them wake up, and cut that shit out.
We are indeed all in this together, and I will probably donate for relief efforts, but I can’t help being angry at the people who are shitting in our collective bed.
The lord didn’t do this. Humans did, and oil corporations too, and anti-science religious nuts. Never forget that.
PurpleGirl
Not religious anymore but these are the types of days when I want to hear the music of the Lutheran church. Certain hymns just feel right to sing in my head. Time to get out my hymnal.
JWL
@PurpleGirl: Google: Johnny Cash – Highway 61 Revisited & The Man Comes Around.
I listened for the first time, just last week, and have been humming it ever since. Had I heard it at a certain point in my life, I might even have joined the Baptist Church.
mclaren
So what you mean is “Soonergrunt is stupid.”
Most of America’s problems over the past 150 years have been caused by Americans rushing into crisis situations while others run the other way. America rushed into Mexico in 1846 while others ran the other way, and didn’t that work out well. America rushed into the Philliipines in 1901 while others ran the other way, and the result was the U.S. army’s first systematic use of waterboarding torture. America rushed into Dien bein Phu while others (the French) ran the other way, and, boy, that a was a peachy end result for us. America rushed into Somalia and Guatamala and El Salvador and Beirut while others ran the other way…what marvelous accomplishments.
When there’s a crisis situation, the first thing everyone needs to do is stop and think. You don’t “rush into a crisis situation” unless you want to fuck things up to a faretheewell.
America needs to stop and contemplate and mull things over. We need to stop rushing into crisis situations.
That goes for individual Americans as well as our nation as a whole. Disband the SWAT teams. Stop. Think things through.
Spend a nice long interval being contemplative. Ask yourself “How badly could this thing go wrong?” before you do something. Ask yourself “What have I forgotten?” and “Why are all those other people running away from this crisis situation? Is there some good reason why people are running away?” Is it possible I shouldn’t be doing this thing I’m contemplating doing?”
Elie
@aimai:
One of my favorites and not well known by tennessee williams. Our love has to hold us together somehow
Flying Squirrel Girl
Update to earlier news: my cousin was part of the group from Plaza Tower that evacuated to a nearby church. She has finally been picked up by her daughter and they are making their way to their homes to see what, if anything, is left.
magurakurin
looks like McLaren picked a bad day to stop sniffing glue.
Reality, which one is it today?
gbear
@Baud: So if the senate passes tornado relief without offsets, is he going to vote against it? He’s backing himself into a really stupid corner.
Jebediah
@mclaren:
are you fucking serious?
in what way is Sooner being the kind of person who rushes in to help people equivalent to militaristic adventurism and fucked up foreign policy?
not everything makes for an appropriate analogy.
Anya
Praying for soonergrunt and all those affected!
@Baud: Fuck that asshole with a rusty pitchfork. What a soulless douchebag.
Todd
@gbear:
Forget it gbear, it’s Oklahoma.
Funny enough, people are starting to light up the Coburn and Inhofe twitter accounts in an interesting way…
dslak
What’s the point of being a firebagger if you can’t make every crisis about you and how Obama has failed you today?
Josie
@mclaren: When John said Soonergrunt “rushes into crisis situations while others run the other way,” I don’t think he meant what you think he meant. You are so caught up in your own selfish reasoning that you misinterpret what other people are thinking and saying. It’s possible a timeout is in order.
trollhattan
@Flying Squirrel Girl:
I simply can’t imagine their panic, and relief. Am heartbroken over what happened at the school itself. Horrible.
trollhattan
@mclaren:
You could use a glass of warm milk.
Flying Squirrel Girl
@trollhattan: Thank you. It has been a very emotional day. My aunt lived through the 1999 tornado in Bridge Creek (I’m not sure if this is the same tornado that ripped through Moore or a different one from the same storm), but she lost everything. I went there about 2 days later to help sift through debris to try and find anything that was hers. When we pulled up to what had been her house, I stepped out of the truck in awe of the destruction, and stepped right onto a nail that went all the way into my foot. As I was standing in line at the fire department several blocks away waiting for a tetanus shot, I looked down and there was one of those tiny wallet-sized school photos of my cousin in the 70s. True story!
Ruckus
@Josie:
I was thinking the same thing. A timeout is in order. The pie filter even, if working, just isn’t enough.
Ruckus
@Josie:
I was thinking the same thing. A timeout is in order. The pie filter even, if working, just isn’t enough.
Yatsuno
@mclaren: lolwut? You have officially lost touch with reality.
Mike in NC
Drove cross-country while on active duty in the 80s from San Diego to Norfolk. A night in OKC was a nightmare of cow manure stench and biker gangs fighting outside my motel room. Then later came the federal building bombings and the MSM was all about “America’s Heartland” and the Real Americans shit that the GOP loved to bloviate about in the post-9/11 era. Fuck yeah!
Calming Influence
@mclaren:
You could use a glass of warm piss.
trollhattan
Confirmed death toll is 91. Will certainly continue to climb, can only hope not too much further. I can’t look at the photos and videos with any perspective, it’s beyond my comprehension.
in canaduh
@Omnes Omnibus:
How did you know?
in canaduh
@Omnes Omnibus:
How did you [email protected]Omnes Omnibus: how did you know?
Herbal Infusion Bagger
However, as leading climate scientists said nasty things about climate change deniers in some emails, this is just a natural cycle, folks. Also, did you know it was hotter when the dinosaurs lived? So 400 ppm CO2 is *totally* nothing to worry about. And Al Gore is rich and fat.