Disaster response / May 2013
Operation Whippit
Where it began, three years before HARP Rescue was a nonprofit. Two people, seven days, and twelve lives pulled back from the rubble and floodwater of Moore, Oklahoma.
- 12people located and rescued
- 7days of search and rescue
- 2team members on the founding team’s first mission
- 3lives saved in water rescues
Figures from HARP Rescue’s impact report for Operation Whippit.
Historical noteThis mission came before HARP Rescue was registered as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in 2016. It was carried out by the founding team that went on to form HARP, and it is included here as part of that record.
A / The situation
An EF5 through a city of homes.
On May 20, 2013, a tornado rated EF5 — the top of the scale — tore through Moore, Oklahoma, on the southern edge of Oklahoma City. It carved a path as much as 1.3 miles wide and 17 miles long, with winds estimated at 200 to 210 mph.1
It killed 24 people, injured more than 200 and flattened whole neighborhoods. Briarwood and Plaza Towers elementary schools were both destroyed.2 At Plaza Towers, seven children were killed.3
The storm was one part of a slow-moving system that had already produced tornadoes across the Great Plains over the two previous days.
B / The call
Emergency management needed hands.
Moore’s emergency operations managers needed help on several fronts at once: moving residents out of danger, finding people trapped in collapsed buildings and storm shelters, and getting heavy equipment to the right places.
HARP’s founding team deployed with just two people. It was their first operational mission — three years before HARP Rescue was registered as a nonprofit.
C / The plan
Three objectives, worked in parallel.
The team set three priorities: evacuation, search and rescue, and water rescue.
For evacuation, HARP coordinated and carried out safe moves for Emergency Operations Management, working alongside local authorities to get residents out of harm’s way. That same coordination got heavy equipment moving quickly, so crews could uncover properties and search for people who were trapped — or who had not survived.
D / In the field
Searching the rubble, then the water.
The team coordinated, mapped and searched the debris field, looking for people trapped in rubble and in underground shelters pinned shut by debris. Nine people were located and rescued who might otherwise have died because they could not get out of the structures holding them.
Flash flooding added a second danger. HARP carried out two water rescues, saving three more lives.
E / The outcome
Twelve people. A first mission.
Over seven days on land and by boat, HARP Rescue located and rescued 12 people who might otherwise have died.
The Moore Fire Department recognized the team for its specialized search and rescue skills and its life-saving work. It was where HARP began: a team of two, in a city that needed every searcher it could get.
Sources
HARP Rescue’s actions and figures come from its own impact report for this operation. Background on the event comes from the public sources below.
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