Chasing down a tornado
Lt. Phillip Wise, of the Bethany Police Dept.
Lt. Phillip Wise, of the Bethany Police Dept. was 21 miles northwest of Moore, Oklahoma when the devastating category tornado touched down this past May.
The New York Times wrote about his heroic act that, “Wise pursued the tornado that flattened parts of this Oklahoma City suburb as if it were a perpetrator, trailing it in his patrol car because he knew there would be mass injuries and people in need in its wake. There was nothing in his job description requiring that he risk his life chasing violent forces of nature outside his jurisdiction for his $62,000 annual salary but his pursuit led him to a destroyed 7-Eleven store, where he helped pull people from the rubble, some alive and some dead.
Read the amazing story of Lt. Wise’s heroics on The New York Times website. The link is below. Wise also responded to the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City “When the bombing happened in ’95, four of us just jumped in one police car and we were down there 30, 35 minutes after it happened,” Lt. Wise said. “We get paid to do a job, and we do it. When tornadoes and bombs or whatever happens, we have to be there, because if we’re not, I think a lot of other people will die.”
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