Experience: I saved my school class during a tornado

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/oct/19/experience-saved-children-from-tornado

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We don't usually get storms in Oklahoma in May, and although it was unseasonally humid, we were having a fairly unremarkable school day. I'm a special needs teacher and I'd seen the last of my class of five-year-olds leave when my dad rang to warn me that there was a tornado heading straight towards us.

At first, I thought he couldn't be right, but then the tornado sirens went off. My own daughter, Kali, was at the school, in the kindergarten class across the hall, and that's where I headed. Her teacher, Jennifer, was following the standard procedure: moving the 10 children into the hallway, getting them to kneel with their elbows on the ground, hands over their heads.

We encouraged the children to sing, to keep up their spirits, but when the skylights started to shatter and the lights went out, it became harder to keep everyone calm. Hail and broken glass showered into the hallway. Instinctively, Jennifer and I took five children each and lay across them. It wasn't something we had to think about: they were tiny children; we were adults and we would protect them with our lives. My daughter was among those I was shielding. I just kept saying over and over, "We're going to be OK. We're going to be OK." But soon I couldn't hear my own voice above the sound of the school's metal roof popping under tremendous pressure.

Then came a noise so loud I'll never forget it, like a jet aircraft but 10 times louder: it was the tornado passing directly overhead. Suddenly I was being pelted with debris. I realised the roof had gone; the wind had torn it clean off. We were at the mercy of the elements.

My mouth filled with dirt and I wondered if we were going to be buried alive. Beneath me, the children clung together tightly. I did my best to cover them, but now there was water, too, pouring down from ruptured pipes. Then I felt a blunt, jarring impact against my back. By now, I was simply repeating to myself, "Please go away, please go away." I just wanted it to stop.

By the time it did, I felt we had been in the eye of the storm for hours, though I later learned we'd been sheltering the children for something like seven minutes. As the chaos subsided, I could hear voices, people from the community calling out to those trapped in the wreckage of the school. It was only when I finally dared raise my head that I discovered we needed rescuing ourselves: a black SUV had been hurled out of the school's car park and lay across us, upside down. It had been prevented from crushing us by a pile of rubble, but I'm sure it's what had hit me in the back.

Once the car had been hoisted away, Jennifer and I were able to check on the kids. The worst anyone had suffered was a ruptured eardrum; Kali had a scratched leg. Frantic parents were arriving all at once, desperate to know if their children were safe. We would later learn that seven children had died when a wall collapsed on them, and as we picked our way through the ruins it seemed extraordinary that anybody had survived at all.

A doctor examined my back and said I needed a checkup at the local hospital. Kali came with me in the ambulance, which drove us through scenes that looked like the end of the world: the tornado, more than a mile wide, had levelled whole streets. My husband and older daughter didn't reach us until almost midnight. I'd learned my back would be fine, despite heavy bruising, but when I saw them the shock and relief finally kicked in. I thought I'd never stop sobbing, and my husband was crying, too. Meanwhile, Kali was proudly showing him her new glasses. "Look, Daddy!" she said. "You told me to take care of these, and they're not broken."

We all met up quietly with our classes before term started, to talk over what had happened and remember those we'd lost. There were tears and hugs; we're all closer now, I think. But even though Kali and I suffered nightmares, watch weather reports nervously and freeze at the sound of a passing jet, I would never move away from Oklahoma. I owe it to the children of this community to keep them safe. If we were hit by another tornado, I would want to be there to do the same again.

• As told to Chris Broughton

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