As the deadly winds sheared off their school’s roof and cinder-block walls caved in around them, some terrified little students at Plaza Towers Elementary ran straight to the safest place they knew — their teachers’ arms.
“One of my little boys just kept saying, ‘I love you, I love you, please don’t die with me, please don’t die with me,’ ’’ recalled teacher Rhonda Crosswhite, who huddled with her fourth-grade students in the Oklahoma school’s restroom stalls as Monday’s deadly tornado bore down on them.
“The whole time I just kept screaming to them, ‘Quit worrying! We’re fine! We’re fine!’ . . . I was in a stall with some kids, and it just started coming down, so I laid on top of them,’’ the teacher told the “Today’’ show yesterday.
“Then I said a few prayers. ‘God please take care of my kids.’ . . . And when [the tornado] finally stopped, we made it out.’’
Damien Klein, one of the little boys saved by Crosswhite, was reunited with his teacher on the show.
The pair hugged each other tightly as Damien’s mom wept.
The little boy recalled his terror — and his teacher’s heroics.
“We were in class’’ when the first town siren warning of an impending weather emergency sounded, Damien said.
“We went in the bathroom, then [the sirens] went off again. Then we heard the tornado, it sounded like a train coming by.
“Then . . . a teacher took cover of us, Miss Crosswhite. She was covering me and my friend Zachary . . . Then she went over to my friend Antonio and covered him. So she saved our lives.”
Such tales of heroism surfaced amid the horror of the devastating storm, which flattened Plaza and another school, Briarwood Elementary, in the town of Moore.
Seven children were reported to have died at Plaza.
One rescuer broke down in tears as he told of helping people drag out a car from the school’s hallway in the frantic search for survivors.
The vehicle had flown straight through the building from the parking lot.
The man said that under the wreckage of the car was a teacher — “and she had three little kids underneath her.’’ All of them survived.
“Good job, teach,’’ the emotional man said he told the woman, according to local CBS- TV affiliate KFOR.
Resident David Wheeler said his son’s third-grade teacher — whom he identified as Julie Simon — sensed that more needed to be done, so she quickly ushered her terrified young charges into a closet.
Wheeler said the teacher shielded his son in her arms as the roof collapsed around them — and winds began lifting students off the ground.
The wind even sucked the eyeglasses off kids’ faces, he said.
Meanwhile, outside the closet, desks and ceiling tiles were flying, and concrete walls were falling.
“[Simon] saved their lives by putting them in a closet and holding their heads down,” the grateful dad said. As rescuers made their way through the rubble at both schools,it was clear that nothing short of a miracle had occurred in many cases.Searchers were “literally were lifting walls up, and kids were coming out,’’ said Oklahoma State Police Sgt. Jeremy Lewis.
Another teacher described laying across her 12-year-old students to shield them.
“I was on top of six kids,’’ she said. “All of mine are OK.’’
Some said the mayhem seemed to come out of nowhere.
One resident who went to Plaza actually seeking shelter before it collapsed said he found students “crouched in hallways and bathrooms, waiting, hoping and praying.
“Then, the school started coming apart,’’ he told NBC.
“They pulled kids out from under cinder blocks without a scratch on them.”
With Post Wire Services
ksheehy@nypost.com
Tales of survival
The couple whose bloodied faces were captured in one of the most gripping photos of the tornado’s aftermath are Steve and Ledonna Cobb.
Steve clutched terrified daughter Jordan, while Ledonna, a teacher, held the hand of another weeping little girl as they fled the Briarwood Elementary School.
“Once the roof came off the building … I knew if I was taken, all the babies … would be gone, too, so I just held on … for dear life,” she told ABC yesterday.
Steve rushed to the school, because “I could imagine how [other kids] were feeling … when their parents weren’t there.”
ONE family survived the collapse of their house by strapping on bike helmets and taking refuge in their bathtub. Amber Kriesel, 39, yesterday told The Post that she and her husband herded their three young daughters into the bathroom as the storm hurtled toward them.
“We were in the bathtub with our girls, and we knelt in front of it with a mattress over us,” she said. “It was this crazy, loud, violent sound.” Later, as she surveyed the rubble of her home, Kriesel said, “Maybe I’m delirious, but I feel very blessed. They say the most important things in life are not things. I can’t complain.”
ELDERLY resident Barbara Garcia was describing her harrowing tale of survival during Monday’s killer tornado for a local TV reporter yesterday — telling how her little black Scottish terrier, Cathy, was still missing — when suddenly, the pooch’s dusty nose peeked out from the twisted wreckage of her flattened house behind her.
“Oh, puppy, oh, baby!” the overjoyed Garcia said, rushing over to Cathy and lifting a piece of metal to free her. “Oh, bless your little bitty heart!’’