Oklahoma tornado survivors salvage what’s left

OKLAHOMA CITY — She had to pause several times. She needed to collect herself. But then Amy Simpson opened up and memories of a harrowing day poured out.

“In God’s name, go away!” Simpson said she yelled as Monday’s tornado approached Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore, Okla., where she is principal. “Go away.”

Moments later, the tornado had gone. But it only needed moments to level her campus and take the lives of seven students. They were 8 and 9 years old.

As she stood before a bank of cameras at a Friday news conference held in the auditorium of another elementary school, Simpson recalled the routine but

satisfying slices of her day, the way her job and her school had been before the tornado:

Students singing and reciting the school motto during the weekly “Rise and Shine” meeting. Interviewing a candidate for a pre-kindergarten teacher position. Preparing to hand out certificates and trophies at awards ceremonies marking the school year’s end.

But in the days since, she has been going to funerals. She listed the services: On Wednesday, “we buried one of our seven. Today we buried two. Tomorrow, we’ll bury two more. Monday, one, and next Friday, one.”

The two buried Friday were 8-year-old Kyle Steven Davis, remembered as the soccer player nicknamed “The Wall,” and 9-year-old Nicolas Scott McCabe, a “bright young man with an ornery grin,” according to their obituaries.

The day was the fourth since the tornado touched down in the Oklahoma City area, ripping a path of destruction that killed 24 people, 10 of them children.

Authorities estimate that 33,000 people have been directly affected by the twister. Even as Oklahomans grieve and wrestle with memories of Monday, they have so much work to do.

At Sooner Legends Inn and Suites in nearby Norman, owner Doug Kennon and his employees have been taking care of the residents and workers of Oklahoma Gas & Electric who have filled his hotel. All 136 rooms are booked, and more than 7,000 meals have been served at five locations set up by his catering operation.

“I just shed a lot of tears in the past couple of hours,” Kennon said. “A lot of people are really hurting.”

Residents have been returning to their homes, to take stock of the damage and try to clear out whatever they could salvage.

On Kyle Drive, in a neighborhood on the southern end of Oklahoma City, shredded wood, strips of metal and brick facades lay scattered over the lawns in front of duplex. Trucks and moving vans lined the streets.

“Right now, I’m numb,” Chantelle Macon, 42, said as she hauled clothes from her roof-damaged home, where she hoped to collect as many photos as she could. “The shocks are coming in little doses.”

Seeing the toll triggered memories of Monday.

“Every time I walk down the street,” she said, “I get a flash of my son standing at the end of the street, screaming.”

Others on the block were in various stages of clearing out. Many residents didn’t spend much time talking, preferring to gather their things and haul them out as quickly as possible.

Zachary Barnes had cleared out the duplex he rented. Nothing remained inside except the insulation sprayed all over his living room floor. The only thing left to do was wait for the FEMA guy.

“Other than that,” he said with a shrug, “I probably won’t come back here.”

Up and down Kyle Drive — and all over the area ravaged by the tornado’s 200-mph winds — people are making strange discoveries. Over at Amber Canary Dedmon’s house, a white Scion with two 2-by-4s impaled through the windshield had been plopped down on her front yard. She doesn’t know whom it belongs to.

She cried the entire day of the storm, horrified by the deaths of children but overjoyed by the survival of her 9-year-old, Rachel. She’s had friends she hadn’t spoken to in years sending her checks and offering to wire money. Still, she worries whether she’ll be able to keep her job and find another home as a working single mom.

And then there’s the guilt.

“I’m wondering why my family was saved when others died, you know?” Canary Dedmon said. But she’s never been so proud of her community.

“People really do care,” she said. “I want to say thank you to the community, to the Red Cross, and to FEMA. It’s just been amazing.”

As Canary Dedmon continued to pick through the rubble of her home, she made another discovery, one that prompted her to speak of her father.

“When my father passed away, I didn’t even have a recording of his voice,” she said of Elmer Canary, who died of cancer Dec. 9, 2010.

As she sorted through things, she came across a white cassette tape with familiar handwriting on it: “Love Dad.”

It was a sermon he’d delivered at his brother’s church in Nevada. She thought she’d lost it long ago.

“I’m a daddy’s girl, and I’ve always been a daddy’s girl,” she said.

“So maybe Dad in heaven’s sending me a message down here.”

matt.pearce@latimes.com

devin.kelly@latimes.com

Pearce reported from Oklahoma City, Kelly from Los Angeles. Times staff writers Rick Rojas and Stephen Ceasar in Los Angeles contributed to this report.