May 12, 1999
Missionaries found danger
in Oklahoma furlough
___By Ken Camp
___Texas Baptist Communications
___OKLAHOMA CITY--Steve and Patti Ellis endured hardships and survived a military coup in Cambodia, where they have served as Southern Baptist relief and development workers since 1994.
___But when the Texas Baptist family stepped out of a storm cellar in suburban Oklahoma City to see the tornado-ravaged neighborhood where they had spent their furlough, one of their four daughters cried out, "I want to go back to Cambodia where it's safe!"
___The Ellises had planned a quiet homecoming weekend for Mother's Day, speaking at Midway Road Baptist Church in Dallas and enjoying the Walt Kriss family's hospitality.
___Instead, Kriss prepared meals for the Ellises from the Texas Baptist disaster reliefunit's field kitchen after a killer tornado leveled the missionary residence of First Southern Baptist Church of Del City, where they had been living.
TEXAS NATIVES PATTI AND STEVE ELLIS (left) talk wtih Larry Blanchard of First Baptist Church of Lindale and Walt Kriss of Midway Road Baptist Church in Dallas at the Texas Baptist Men's disaster relief unit set up at First Southern Baptist Church of Del City, Okla. (Photo by Ken Camp)
___That house was one of at least 3,000 destroyed or heavily damaged by tornadoes that cut a trail of tears through central Oklahoma May 3. The twisters--some rated the maximum F5 on the Fujita-Pearson Scale, with wind speeds greater than 260 mph--killed at least 41 people, injured 750 and caused an estimated $500 million property damage.
___Two days later, Texas Baptist Men disaster relief volunteers set up their mobile unit in the parking lot at First Southern Baptist Church of Del City, a southeastern suburb of Oklahoma City.
___The Texas Baptists prepared meals that church members served to rescue workers and storm victims in their fellowship hall and American Red Cross workers delivered throughout the area.
___Oklahoma Baptists set up a similar emergency food service at First Baptist Church of Moore, a southern suburb between Oklahoma City and Norman.
___On-site Coordinator Larry Blanchard, from First Baptist Church of Lindale, said the Texas crew cooked 4,000 meals their first day in Oklahoma, and he expected the meal count to accelerate rapidly in coming days.
___The Ellis family, members of Midway Road Baptist Church in Dallas for more than seven years before appointment to Cambodia, moved into the Del City missionary house last October.
___Monday afternoon, May 3, they were watching their young daughters play in the backyard when a neighbor commented on the storm clouds gathering off to the southwest.
___She told Ellis that if the weather became threatening, his family was welcome to come next door to join her in the storm cellar her late husband had built 30 years ago.
___After a few minutes, 12-year-old Hannah went inside to watch television. Before long, she ran into the yard calling for her parents to come see the storm warnings that had interrupted regular programming.
___When they saw tornadoes pounding the Bridge Creek community on Oklahoma City's southwestern fringes and heard that the storms were headed northeast toward them, the Ellises ran to their neighbor's cellar.
___Twenty-one people from four households, including their neighbor's children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, crowded into the dark cellar. Initially, Ellis and a couple of other men kept the door cracked open an inch or two to watch the developing storm.
___"First came the rain, then dime-sized hail. Next it was golf-ball sized and finally baseball-sized. Then it stopped, and it was deathly quiet," Ellis said.
___A deafening roar followed the eerie silence. The tornado was bearing down on them. Ellis and the others closed the storm cellar door tight.
___"It sounded like the turbo engines of a jet plane coming right toward us," he remembered. "It took three grown men holding onto the army straps on that door to keep it closed."
___Although their neighbor was a devout Lutheran, the rest of her family had little church background. Even so, Patti Ellis recalled, they began reciting the Lord's Prayer and the 23rd Psalm.
___A loud crash interrupted the Scripture recital. Those inside the storm cellar waited a few more minutes until they were sure the storm had passed, then they tried to open the door. It wouldn't budge.
___After about 20 long minutes, the Ellises heard voices outside. Everyone inside the storm cellar called out for help.
___"Are you OK in there?" someone asked.
___The Ellises and their companions assured him they were not injured, but they could not open the cellar door. The rescuer said a house had collapsed on top of the storm cellar. With assistance from others, he managed to move enough debris to pry open the door.
___"It looked like a bomb had gone off. No, it was worse than a bomb would have been," Ellis said, recalling his first impressions of the storm-ravaged neighborhood.
___Water spurted geysers from broken pipes, and the pungent smell of natural gas hung in the air. A body lay in the street. Ellis knew nearly all of the elderly couples and widows who lived near him, and he had never seen that person before.
___As Ellis worked his way through the rubble trying to help his neighbors, emergency personnel evacuated his wife and the girls from the area, fearful of the danger gas leaks presented.
___The family became separated for about three and a half hours. Ellis made more than 40 frantic phone calls before he finally was reunited with his wife and daughters at the home of a staff member from First Southern Baptist Church of Del City.
___The next day, a U.S. Marshall took Ellis into the cordoned-off disaster area so he could see what was left of his neighborhood.
___Ellis found no trace of the more than $20,000 worth of donated medical supplies he had planned to take back to Cambodia. The corner of the house where bedrooms had stood was stripped to a bare concrete slab.
___But Ellis, who had been struggling with uncertainty over whether it was God's will for him to take his family back to southeast Asia, discovered some important papers.
___"The first thing I found was our six passports and our return tickets to Cambodia," he said. "They weren't damaged. They were not even wet."
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