MOORE, Okla. - President Barack Obama walked among 10-foot-tall piles of tornado debris littered with children’s schoolbooks Sunday as he offered the condolences of a nation to a town that was nearly wiped off the map by a storm.
Standing next to the rubble that was once Plaza Towers Elementary School - and the place where seven children lost their lives when the tornado touched down a week ago - the president declared his confidence that Moore would rebuild and recover, and he pledged the support of the government and the nation toward that goal.
“This is a strong community with strong character,” Obama said with a grim face, as he stood with Mary Fallin, the Republican governor of Oklahoma, and local officials. “There’s no doubt they will bounce back. But they need help.”
Obama, a president who is often locked in a struggle with Republicans over their disdain for expansive federal agencies, has repeatedly found himself pledging the full power of the government to confront natural disasters. On Tuesday, he will return to the New Jersey coast to witness the rebuilding after superstorm Sandy.
In Oklahoma, Obama took a brief walk through the remains of what once was a thriving suburb south of Oklahoma City. American flags, flapping in the stiff winds of the warm spring day, were among the rubble.
But the piles also contained reminders of the lives torn apart by winds that topped 200 mph as the twister cut a roughly 20-mile path of destruction through town.
There were 2012 yearbooks from the Plaza Towers school and a workbook titled Jamal’s Surprise. There were several waterlogged encyclopedias and a pink baby-doll stroller. In another pile was a purple plastic toy camcorder and a pink child’s parka. Every few feet, crumpled cars blocked the way and twisted metal littered yards that once had lawns. The only trees remaining had no bark and no leaves.
Secret Service agents stood in pairs on the roofs of military vehicles. Only the hum of a portable generator and the rush of a stiff wind could be heard.
As he was in other places - Joplin, the Jersey Shore, West Texas, Colorado Springs, Tuscaloosa and the Gulf Coast - Obama was the consoler-in-chief, with the television cameras rolling. He promised Moore residents that his administration would stay with them - as it has, he said, in the other communities - as Oklahomans rebuilt.
“When I say that we’ve got your back, we keep our word,” Obama said outside the school.
Obama at one point joined the Lewis family, which lost their home behind the school. He said the important thing was that they survived and could replace their things.
“What a mess,” he told their son Zack, a third-grader at the shattered school. Zack’s father, Scott, ran into the school just before the storm hit and ran with his terrified son back to their home’s storm shelter.
“You’ve got some story to tell,” Obama told the boy. “This is something you’ll remember all your life.”
The president’s visit symbolizes the money and resources of the federal government. More than 450 federal employees remain in Oklahoma a week after the tornado ripped through Moore. Officials said about 4,200 people had registered for a total of $3.4 million in immediate aid made available by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Rebuilding will probably cost billions, with a portion coming from the federal government.
The twister was an EF5, the most powerful on the National Weather Service scale for tornado strength. The storm destroyed more than 1,300 homes and more than 47 nonresidential structures, according to FEMA. The storm may have caused as much as $2 billion in damage and affected 30,000 people, according to Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett.
The twister hit Moore two days before the second anniversary of the deadliest single U.S. tornado in almost 60 years, which slammed into Joplin, Mo., about 225 miles northeast of Moore. That storm killed 161 people and caused more than $2 billion in damage.
Fallin said Sunday that so far, FEMA has done a great job of speeding relief and cash assistance to affected families, but she’s concerned about the long run.
“There’s going to come a time when there’s going to be a tremendous amount of need once we begin the debris clearing, which we already have, but really get it cleared off to where we need to start rebuilding these homes, rebuilding these businesses,” she said on CBS’ Face the Nation. “And we know at different times in the past, money hasn’t come always as quickly as it should.”
Fallin said the money is particularly vital for the victims. “A lot of people lose their checkbooks, they lose their credit cards, they lose their driver’s license, their birth certificates, their insurance papers, they lose everything, and they have no cash. And some of the banks were even hit, the ATM machines, so people need cash to get immediate needs,” she said.
Fallin also said it will be important to have a “vigorous discussion” about providing safe places in schools.
Plaza Towers Elementary School did not have a “saferoom” in which teachers and students could seek protection.
The head of Oklahoma’s emergency management agency has said more than 100 schools have already received federal grant money for safe rooms, which have deep foundations, thick concrete walls and steel doors that can withstand strong winds.
In his remarks Sunday, Obama made a point of noting that federal funds had not only paid for disaster relief efforts, but also for training of local and state police officers and firefighters that helped them to respond quickly after the tornado struck.
“We’ve got to make sure that those resources remain in place,” Obama said before visiting with law-enforcement officials at a firehouse that now serves as a recovery command center. “We can’t just wait until the disaster happens.”
The White House said FEMA has also provided $57 million in rebates and incentives to help build about 12,000 storm shelters in Oklahoma. “These storm shelters can be the difference between life and death,” presidential spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters accompanying Obama to Oklahoma on Air Force One.
In recent days, Republicans in Congress have seized on a series of controversies involving the Justice Department, the Internal Revenue Service and the State Department, in part to argue that Obama presides over an overbearing government that has grown too big to control.
In places like Oklahoma, however, the differences have narrowed for now. Faced with the destructive power that nature can wield, both parties seem more than willing to embrace the need for a well-financed government that can respond quickly.
Later Sunday, Fallin hosted the Oklahoma Strong memorial service at First Baptist Church in Moore. Television stations broadcast the service throughout the state.
Rabbi Veder Harris read from the book of 1st Kings, noting that God wasn’t in the storm, but is in the “still, clear voice within us.”
Archbishop Paul S. Coakley of Oklahoma City offered praise and glory and asked God to look upon his family.
Fallin quoted from Psalm 46, which says God is our strength even if mountains tremble.
In his remarks earlier, Obama recalled hearing that a Bible had been found in the aftermath of a tornado in Oklahoma the day before the one that hit Moore. The Bible, he said, was open to a passage: “A man will be as a hiding place from the wind and a cover from the tempest.”
“It’s a reminder,” Obama said, “as Scripture often is, that God has a plan.” Information for this article was contributed by Michael D. Shear of The New York Times, by Nedra Pickler of The Associated Press and by Julianna Goldman of Bloomberg News.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 05/27/2013