Talking with Gayland Kitch, the Emergency Management director for the city of Moore, about the tornadoes in the U.S. this week

On Wednesday morning, Gayland Kitch,the Emergency Management director for the city of Moore, was giving a tornado safety presentation to some seniors.

One of the slides he showed is a photo taken by a police lieutenant after the F-5 tornado struck Moore on May 3, 1999.

“It’s a Chevy pickup that’s on its side and it is bent completely around a tree so that the front wheels and the back wheels are touching,” he said. “Can you imagine the force that it would take to bend the steel frame of that pickup that way?”

On Wednesday, what has been called the “nation’s deadliest tornado outbreak in almost four decades” brought disaster to several states.

“Some of the damage pictures from Tuscaloosa looked like just what we looked like after May 3,” Kitch said. “The amount of energy and force that is all there is just incredible.”

The May 3, 1999 tornadoes claimed more than 40 lives and that was horrible, Kitch said. These tornadoes this week, claimed the lives of hundreds.

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