i had a friend that lived in midwest city in the early to mid 90s, they lived in the neighborhood thats bordered by reno, sooner, air depot, and 15th street (the neighborhood to the immediate north of rose state college).

i havent been in this neighborhood since then, but i was looking at 7th street (on google maps) and noticed nothing but all new houses there and my jaw fell to the floor.

what happened to all the old houses i remember? were they damaged due to a tornado? and if so, what specific date did this tornado strike? ..or did some developer (or the city) acquire many of properties and demolished them and rebuilt new homes?

i miss the look of the old neighborhood...it took many of my fond memories with it. :(

It was the May 3, 1999 tornado that pretty much devastated that area.

Here is a picture of the area taken a couple of days after the tornado.



I still live in neighborhood.

http://www.nssl.noaa.gov/users/brooks/public_html/overflight.jpg

The bottom part of the picture by the large open field is 15th street.

http://www.nssl.noaa.gov/news/may3rd/outbreak.html

The picture doesn't tell the whole story though either. Unlike the Moore area, a lot of the homes that were "destroyed" in this neighborhood were technically still standing after the storm. Several of my friend's houses were rotated on their foundations. So their homes were a total loss, but they didn't get obliterated like a normal tornado path house would have been.

The tornado was lifting at this point. You'll see the railroad tracks at the park in the top part of the NOAA picture. The homes north of that line weren't damaged by anything other than debris from the homes south of them. So it really served as a dividing line. My aunt lived on Char Ln at that time and had part of someone's roof land in hers, but that was the only damage from that side.

So if you drive through there, you'll see a whole lot of new homes, but they weren't as bad off as you saw in places like the neighborhood across from Moore's 1st Baptist. Most people were able to save their belongings in MWC. There were plenty homes that were obliterated, but just not to the same degree. Several of my friends did lose their homes in the storm, but as you saw, they were able to build a much nicer home from the devestation.

My great grandfather and his wife died in that field that day.

I live on 4th street, and took shelter in the hallway of my home with my family. Several homes on the eastern section of that road were wiped out or obliterated. If you go just to the soth of the railroad tracks in the picture you will see the section I am talking about. 4th is the 2nd street from the tracks. The last 2 or three houses on the north side of the street were down to foundation and a couple of interior walls. On the south side of the street there are now 4 new homes with one vacant lot.

I received wind and debris damage to my home as well. The roof was starting to lift as the tornado finally lifted around hte northen side of 3rd street (1st street south of tracks) as homes were heavily damaged there as well.

It was quite amazing how Reno sort of acted as a dividing line. If you went north of Reno on May 4th, it was a total different story from south of it. I've never seen such a mess. I helped clean up my aunt and uncles neighborhood clearing treet from the street and yards. I helped friends in that neighborhood discussed above, pack up boxes of their stuff to "move" into a hotel for months while they rebuilt. I remember going to Del City high to check the names list to see if people you knew had come in as injured or hospitalized.

One ironic thing was, the MCHS band had a trip to Florida scheduled to leave at the end of that week. We did end up going on the trip (and did quite well winning everything), but we all felt as though it was important that we continue our plans. That close, there wasn't much that could be done in terms of clean up. With the power lines down every where, and things being closed off for anyone that didn't live in the area, you really couldn't DO much for another week or 2. The parents were all in agreement as well (especially those with damaged homes). It helped as much to keep those kid's minds off things to get away. We did have a couple band kids that lost their homes. What was a bit un-nerving was as we made our way down to Orlando, we passed through several severe storms with hail. We also passed through an area on the interstate that also had a tornado go through a few hours before we got there. We all knew the storm couldn't have been the same one since the OKC one was traveling NE, not SE. But it did feel like the storms were following us on our trip.