I went down to Tuscaloosa, AL, last spring as part of a week-long thing for Habitat for Humanity. We were rebuilding some of the houses / constructing safe rooms for people in neighborhoods where their homes were destroyed by the tornadoes in '11.
The head dude for disaster management (I'm not sure what the government term is for it) took us on a tour of the tornado's path, and it's insane. Even a year later there were neighborhoods that were just completely leveled. Churches, which I'm sure most people know are considered rather stable structures, were still, like... in-half. He brought us up on a hill in the tour bus and you could just look at rows and rows of concrete foundation. No house, no piping or utility structures, just foundation. We were driving through a grass field and he just matter-of-factly said, "There used to be a trailer park here." And there was seriously fucking nothing. It looked like an open field of grass, but there used to be a park there. Like, God damn. The tornado in Tuscaloosa was on the ground for all of 10~12 minutes and their best estimates for total recovery are at the least 10 years. One interesting thing that some of the cops were tellin' us about is that after the storm, so many dogs were homeless or misplaced that they started forming primal-ass hunting packs and the local police had to go out and put them down because they were attacking people / food distribution areas, etc. Also, since Alabama passed those fucked up immigration laws just before the storms hit in '11, they had a huge problem identifying bodies / locating missing persons because the Hispanic community was so reluctant to speak with authorities, and in some cases they had to actually force aid upon these people because they were afraid of themselves or having a loved one deported, etc.
The safe rooms they have are interesting there, though. Although the soil and whatnot isn't really similar to Oklahoma's, a lot of people also just can't afford basements (the ones who had them somehow didn't get touched) so the new initiative is to implement safe rooms in structures. They're sorta like closets but they have enough space to hold 4-5 people, the usual size of a family. It's a normal wooden room but surrounded by sheet metal on all sides that's bolted directly into the wood, and the door for it is the same type of door they use on fucking commercial airplanes. The rooms are capable of sustaining winds and debris impacts (such as a 2x4) of up to 200 mph. Pretty crazy stuff. It was really cool to work on it, and hopefully people in Oklahoma will get a similar treatment from Habitat. Tornadoes are just seriously fucking scary.
My brother and I used to live in Clarksville, TN, which is on the Eastern edge of Tornado Alley. A big-ass tornado came through there in 1999 (I was 6 or something) and demolished a bank downtown and some other stuff, and then my brother was on a field trip in Nashville, TN, in 1998 when that big one hit downtown. I remember being at t-ball practice one night and the sky went from sunshine-and-butterflies to a color as black as Satan's asshole in about 30 seconds and we had to book it home, and no shit the view was like those storm chasers'. Just debris and limbs and shit flying everywhere from the winds. A tornado touched down that day, but I didn't see it 'cause we hid in the bathroom when we got home. Another time I was at school in Clarksville and they rushed us into the hallway (like they're supposed to) and I could see the rotation in the backyard of our school, just, like... chillin' there. I really don't remember what happened afterward, but our school was untouched.
Nature don't play around. Also for anyone who happens to be in the path or a tornado in the future, always wear shoes or have them near you when taking cover. Destroyed buildings and thrown cars tend to lend themselves to broken glass everywhere, and some people in Tuscaloosa were just trapped because they didn't have any shoes on.