OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. — An Oklahoma City neighborhood is cleaning up debris after a tornado touched down around 1:30 a.m. on November 3.
Instantly, Oklahomans did what Oklahomans do.
Numerous homes suffered severe damage, and multiple injuries were reported. The storm flipped over cars, trees fell on top of homes, and debris scattered from one home to another.
"You were scared. You did good, though. You were brave. You were brave, brave, brave," said Kaitlin Nixon while talking to her son.
She rode out the storm with her two boys and her husband. She said the warning came right as they noticed the winds pick up.
Luckily, the tornado did not touch her home, but a few blocks down the street it is a different story.
"Gut-wrenching. You don’t know what to say. You don’t know what to do. You look at it and you’re like where do you even start?" said Nixon.
2 News saw families sorting through what was left of their belongings.
"I was looking at all the damage back there and I thought, 'Wow this is devastating.' And so we started calling people and said, 'Hey can you come can you bring water? Can you bring this? Can you bring that?"' said Pastor Tom Drake of the Free Will Baptist Church.
The church is just across the street from the neighborhood that took the brunt of the storm.
After the storm, there was a strong display of the Oklahoma Standard. Volunteers boarded up broken windows, patched roofs, and even fed those who lost everything — all just hours after the tornado touched down.
"We were thinking about having a worship service. And then the thought came, why don’t we just serve?" Drake said.
Drake reflected on a time when he was helped after his home was destroyed by the Moore tornado in 2013.
"I got a call from my son; he said, 'Dad, your house is gone. It’s completely demolished,'" said Drake.The church gathered donations from the community to give back while keeping the "you got a friend in me" mentality in the sooner state.
"It gives you a good feeling to be able to help people and he was saying you know what that’s the way people in Oklahoma are," said Drake.
The Free Will Baptist Church is collecting donations to help their neighbors.
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