Word: tornadoes
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Clinton's passage from honored guest last June to universal villain today has been abrupt. For a man given to feeling the pain of others, his initial damage control was not good. Touring tornado wreckage in Oklahoma the day after the bombing of the Chinese embassy, the President paused to offer his "regrets and profound condolences" but neglected to apologize. This was an insensitive lapse for the Chinese, who have rankled for decades because of Japanese politicians stretching syntax to avoid apologizing for their country's wartime aggression. With their prickly sense of national pride, the Chinese are quick...
Even more ominous for those on the ground, however, was its demonic persistence. The average tornado logs mere minutes on the ground. The Chickasha twister settled in like a plow, ripping an 80-mile gash northeast through a corner of Oklahoma City and several suburbs over an endless four hours. Thousands of Oklahomans heard the shriek of the warning sirens gradually overwhelmed by a sound variously described as like a locomotive, or a screaming jet engine, or nothing on Earth. The worst fear, said Moore resident Delee MacAlister, "is the terror of knowing you are going to die. We prayed...
...Moore were not. Eleven perished in the small town of Bridge Creek alone; one man there lost his mother and his three-week-old son. Altogether, some 750 Oklahomans were injured and 41 killed. And three died in Kansas, and one in Texas. It was the nation's highest tornado-related body count in more than a decade. Property damage may reach $1 billion...
...Christmas-tree stand, a little red wagon crushed under a beam. In Del City, Monica Hicks wandered the vacant lot that had been her home and remarked, "I knew it would be bad, but I didn't prepare myself for this. My three-year-old said, 'Mommy, the tornado ate our house.'" Hicks spotted a pink plastic Cadillac on the ground with a doll at the wheel and broke into a loopy, exhausted grin. "Barbie wore her seat belt," she said...
...Friday, President Clinton had declared 16 counties disaster areas. The calamity will yield data on the meteorology of murderous storms. It will also fuel a campaign to assure that new homes built in Tornado Alley without traditional storm shelters include reinforced safe rooms. But the main message, at least according to the Daily Oklahoman, lay elsewhere. As it happens, last Thursday was the 48th annual Day of Prayer. "Right now in Oklahoma," the newspaper editorialized, "it sure seems like common sense to make every day a day of prayer...