Operation Whippit

A / The situation

An EF5 through a city of homes.

On May 20, 2013, a tornado rated EF5 — the top of the scale — tore through Moore, Oklahoma, on the southern edge of Oklahoma City. It carved a path as much as 1.3 miles wide and 17 miles long, with winds estimated at 200 to 210 mph.¹

It killed 24 people, injured more than 200 and flattened whole neighborhoods. Briarwood and Plaza Towers elementary schools were both destroyed.² At Plaza Towers, seven children were killed.³

The storm was one part of a slow-moving system that had already produced tornadoes across the Great Plains over the two previous days.

B / The call

Emergency management needed hands.

Moore’s emergency operations managers needed help on several fronts at once: moving residents out of danger, finding people trapped in collapsed buildings and storm shelters, and getting heavy equipment to the right places.

HARP Rescue deployed with a team of two. It was the organization’s first operational mission.

C / The plan

Three objectives, worked in parallel.

The team set three priorities: evacuation, search and rescue, and water rescue.

For evacuation, HARP coordinated and carried out safe moves for Emergency Operations Management, working alongside local authorities to get residents out of harm’s way. That same coordination got heavy equipment moving quickly, so crews could uncover properties and search for people who were trapped — or who had not survived.

D / In the field

Searching the rubble, then the water.

The team coordinated, mapped and searched the debris field, looking for people trapped in rubble and in underground shelters pinned shut by debris. Nine people were located and rescued who might otherwise have died because they could not get out of the structures holding them.

Flash flooding added a second danger. HARP carried out two water rescues, saving three more lives.

E / The outcome

Twelve people. A first mission.

Over seven days on land and by boat, HARP Rescue located and rescued 12 people who might otherwise have died.

The Moore Fire Department recognized HARP for its specialized search and rescue skills and its life-saving work. It was where HARP began: a team of two, in a city that needed every searcher it could get.