Former Moore Coach Recounts May 3, 1999 Tornado

Wearing football helmets for protection, Coach Chris Stiles, his family, and their neighbors literally huddled up in the Westmoore High School Football field house during the tornado.

Stiles says the family did not make those plans until moments before the tornado touched down in Moore, Oklahoma on May 3, 1999.

"You could just feel it and hear it ripping this apart," said Stiles.

The former Westmoore coach can still give a play-by-play of the tornado that left his house in ruins.

"It was hailing and raining and then all of a sudden, the electricity went off."

The Stiles family initially planned to take shelter in the bathtub of their home, but Coach Stiles says his son's fear and a call from a neighbor redirected the family to the field house.

"Being a man of faith, I always say that's a phone call from God."

After the storm passed, the family returned to their home to find it in a pile of rubble with no bathtub left.

"You just don't know if we would have survived that or what would happen," Stiles said, describing the walk back to his neighborhood that day. "It looked like a warzone and my house on the corner, I couldn't even recognize it." 

The May 3 tornado destroyed thousands of homes and killed 45 people.  Coach Stiles and his family feel blessed to be left untouched.

"We were just fortunate to be at the right place at the right time."

So in the same spot where the tornado touched down, the Stiles family rebuilt their home. Now every year on the anniversary of the disaster, they remember the victims who did not survive the storm.

"This is real and it can happen to anyone, and on May 3, 1999, it happened to the stiles family."

The Stiles family put in a storm shelter and live on the same lot in the neighborhood. Coach Stiles is now the football coach at Mount St. Mary's.