The tornado that ripped through Oklahoma City’s suburbs and killed two dozen people Monday hit some Ohio University football players close to home.
A trio of Ohio football redshirt seniors reside in Oklahoma — OU quarterback Tyler Tettleton and running back Beau Blankenship are from Norman, Okla. Wide receiver Donte Foster is from Guthrie, Okla. Both towns are just miles from where most of the destruction took place in Moore, Okla.
“It’s terrible what happened, it’s heartbreaking,” Blankenship said. “My friends and family are OK. Everything is all right. Their houses are fine, so that’s good to hear, but all the other stuff about the school and the kids is devastating.”
“It’s Tornado Alley and it’s a scary place when that stuff’s happening,” Blankenship said. “We’re so used to tornados happening that we don’t think much about it until something serious like this one happens.”
Tettleton was at his home in Norman, which didn’t have much destruction and kept the quarterback safe from harm.
President Barack Obama mobilized the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin called out the National Guard on Monday night.
The National Weather Service originally categorized Monday’s tornado as an EF-4, with winds from 160 to 200 miles per hour, but many weather analysts on the scene said last night that they believed the tornado was an EF-5.
An EF-5 tornado — the highest tornado classification — has winds faster than 200 miles an hour, according to the National Weather Service.
“It looks like a combination of Iraq and Japan after the tsunami hit,” said Gary Tuchman, a CNN national correspondent, on Anderson Cooper 360.
The tornado touched down to the southwest of Moore shortly before 3 p.m. Monday before traveling 20 miles on the ground for 40 minutes, according to the National Weather Service.
The mile-wide tornado hit Newcastle, Okla., first before traveling northeast and slicing through Moore, a suburb of Oklahoma City, heavily damaging multiple schools, a hospital and hundreds of homes.
Only nine EF-5 tornadoes have touched down in the U.S. since 1999, according to the National Weather Service. An EF-5 tornado that struck Moore in 1999 caused more than a billion dollars in damage.
“The damage of (Monday’s) tornado is going to be two or three times worse than 1999,” said Bill Karins, an NBC meteorologist, on All In with Chris Hayes. “Worldwide, we’ve only had six billion-dollar tornadoes in history… and this will (be another).”
Though many of OU’s football players were in Athens when the storm hit, their thoughts turned to those back at home.
“Anything I can do to help, I will,” Blankenship said. “I donated money to the Red Cross as soon as I heard. I’m kind of far away, but if there’s anything I can do to help, I definitely will.”
dd195710@ohiou.edu
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