AP
Updated at 12:07pm 5/22/13
The mayor of the Oklahoma City suburb that was devastated by a massive tornado Monday says he wants safe-room shelters built in all new homes.
Moore Mayor Glen Lewis, on Wednesday, said he will propose an ordinance in the next couple of days at the Moore City Council that would modify building codes to require the construction of reinforced shelters in every new home in the town of 56,000.
Lewis says he is confident he’ll get the four votes needed on the six-member council. The measure could be in force within months.
Underground safe rooms are typically built below garages and can cost around $4,000.
Plaza Towers Elementary School and Briarwood Elementary School, both of which were hit in the tornado, did not have reinforced storm shelters or safe rooms, said Albert Ashwood, the director of the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management. Seven children were found dead at Plaza Towers.
More than 100 schools across the state do have safe rooms, he said, explaining that it’s up to each jurisdiction to set spending priorities.
But Ashwood said a shelter would not necessarily have saved more lives at Plaza Towers.
“When you talk about any kind of safety measures … it’s a mitigating measure, it’s not an absolute,” he told reporters. “There’s not a guarantee that everyone will be totally safe.”
Residents of Moore, Okla. are now returning to rubble after the tornado decimated the town Monday afternoon, but some homes have been targeted by looters.
Moore police arrested two unidentified people after a homeowner said they were picking around the rubble of his house, News9.com reports.
The homeowner said the suspects told him they were looking for survivors, but officials found a bag full of items allegedly stolen from homes in the area.
After a full day of searching for survivors in rubble on Tuesday, authorities believe everyone has been accounted for.
“I’m 98 percent sure we’re good,” Gary Bird said at a news conference with the governor, who had just completed an aerial tour of the disaster zone.
“As far as I know, of the list of people that we have had that they are all accounted for in one way or another,” added Oklahoma County Commissioner Brian Maughan, according to Reuters.
The Oklahoma state medical examiner’s office says the death toll is at least 24, with at least ten of the dead being children. More than 200 people were treated at area hospitals. An earlier death toll was set at 51, but the medical examiner said some victims may have been counted twice in the confusion.
The state medical examiner’s office, in a statement to FoxNews.com Wednesday, identified the victims as Case Futrell, 4-months-old, Sydnee Vargyas, 7-months old, Katrina Vargyas, 4, Kyle Davis, 8, Antonia Canderaria, 9, Janae Hornsby, 9, Sydney Angle, 9, Emily Conatzer, 9, Nicolas McCabe, 9, Christopher Legg, 9, Megan Futrell, 29, Jenny Neely, 38, Shannon Quick, 40, Terri Long, 49, and Cindy Plumley and Deanna Ward, both ages unknown.
Eight other victims, including a 39-year-old, 41-year-old, 54-year-old, 63-year-old and 65-year-old, remain unidentified pending the notification of kin.
Hornsby was one of the victims at Plaza Towers Elementary. Her father Joshua raced to the school Monday in an attempt to save her, but arrived ten minutes late, CBS News reports.
“It’s like taking a piece out of my heart and just like stomping on it ,” said her grandmother, Yolanda Hornsby. “And to come to terms with that — that I won’t be able to spend Sunday dinners with her, no more times at church with anymore, all of that stuff that we did together. And the smile.”
Search-and-rescue teams had concentrated on Plaza Towers Elementary, where the storm ripped off the roof, knocked down walls and destroyed the playground as students and teachers huddled in hallways and bathrooms.
Several students were pulled alive from under a collapsed wall and other heaps of mangled debris. Rescue workers passed the survivors down a human chain of parents and neighborhood volunteers. Parents carried children in their arms to a triage center in the parking lot. Some students looked dazed, others terrified.
Officials were still trying to account for a handful of children not found at the school who may have gone home early with their parents, Bird said.
After hearing that the tornado was headed toward another school called Briarwood Elementary, David Wheeler left work and drove 100 mph through blinding rain and gusting wind to find his 8-year-old son, Gabriel. When he got to the school site, “it was like the earth was wiped clean, like the grass was just sheared off, ” Wheeler said.
Eventually, he found Gabriel, sitting with the teacher who had protected him. His back was cut and bruised and gravel was embedded in his head — but he was alive. As the tornado approached, students at Briarwood were initially sent to the halls, but a third-grade teacher — whom Wheeler identified as Julie Simon — thought it didn’t look safe and so ushered the children into a closet, he said.
The teacher shielded Gabriel with her arms and held him down as the tornado collapsed the roof and starting lifting students upward with a pull so strong that it sucked the glasses off their faces, Wheeler said.
”She saved their lives by putting them in a closet and holding their heads down,” Wheeler said.
The National Weather Service gave the twister a rating of EF5 on the Enhanced Fujita Scale for wind speed and breadth, and experts say it released an amount of energy that dwarfed even the power of the atomic bomb that leveled Hiroshima.
EF5 tornadoes are the strongest tornadoes and have the most violent winds on Earth, more powerful than a hurricane. The Moore tornado’s wind speeds were estimated at between 200 and 210 mph.
The Oklahoma Insurance Department says a preliminary estimate suggests the cost of damage from the tornado could be more than $2 billion.
The five ranking puts the tornado in the same class as the deadliest in U.S. history, which hit Joplin, Mo., in 2011, killing 158 and injuring hundreds more.
Several meteorologists consulted by the Associated Press estimated the tornado’s energy released during the storm ranged from 8 times to more than 600 times the power of the Hiroshima bomb, with more experts at the high end. Their calculations were based on energy measured in the air and then multiplied over the size and duration of the storm.
“An EF-5 is as bad as it gets,” said Joe D’Aleo, co-chief forecaster for WeatherBell Analytics. “It’s equivalent to a Category 5 hurricane. It means winds were more than 200 miles per hour, and it means you have to be underground, because there will be nothing left above ground.”
Such devastation was seen in Moore Tuesday, as emergency crews struggled to navigate devastated neighborhoods because there were no street signs left. Some rescuers used smartphones or GPS devices to guide them through areas with no recognizable landmarks.
“We will rebuild and we will regain our strength,” said Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin, who described a flyover of the area as “heartbreaking experience” that is “hard to look at.”
Fallin said many houses and buildings have been reduced to “sticks and bricks.” Homes were seen crushed into piles of broken wood. Cars and trucks were left crumpled on the roadside.
“Our prayers are with the people of Oklahoma today,” President Obama said in a Tuesday news conference, expressing gratitude for the residents and first responders who are assisting with the search and rescue efforts, and teachers who shielded their children as the tornado hit two schools.
“The people of Moore should know that their country will remain on the ground there for them, and be beside them as long as it takes,” Obama said. “Oklahoma needs to get everything that it needs right away.”
Fallin announced that the White House approved Oklahoma’s request for disaster assistance for five counties: Cleveland, Lincoln, McClain, Oklahoma and Pottawatomie. Additional damage assessments could be added to the declaration.
Fallin also urged Oklahomans to call 1-800-621-FEMA for help, and said the state set up a website, www.okstrong.ok.gov
, for information on available emergency services.
A map provided by the National Weather Service showed that the storm began west of Newcastle and crossed the Canadian River into Oklahoma City’s rural far southwestern side about 3 p.m Monday. When it reached Moore, the twister cut a path through the center of town before lifting back into the sky at Lake Stanley Draper.
Monday’s powerful tornado loosely followed the path of a killer twister that slammed the region in May 1999; the storm then had winds clocked at 300 mph.
Kelsey Angle, a weather service meteorologist in Kansas City, Mo., said it’s unusual for two such powerful tornadoes to track roughly the same path. It was the fourth tornado to hit Moore since 1998. A twister also struck in 2003.
Lewis, who was also mayor during the 1999 storm, said the city was already working to recover.
“We’ve already started printing the street signs,” he said. “It took 61 days to clean up after the 1999 tornado. We had a lot of help then. We’ve got a lot of help now.”
Update 5:43am 5/22/13
Residents of Moore, Oklahoma are returning to sheer devastation after a massive tornado decimated the town Monday afternoon, releasing an amount of energy that dwarfed even the power of the atomic bomb that leveled Hiroshima, according to experts.
The National Weather Service gave the twister a rating of EF5 for wind speed and breadth, and severity of damage on Tuesday. EF5 tornadoes are the strongest tornadoes and have the most violent winds on Earth, more powerful than a hurricane. The Moore tornado’s wind speeds were estimated at between 200 and 210 mph.
Officials on Tuesday revised the number of dead from an earlier count of 51 to 24, saying at least nine of the dead were children. The state medical examiner said some victims may have been counted twice in the confusion. More than 200 people were treated at area hospitals.
“To date, 24 deceased victims of the tornado have been transported to our Oklahoma City office, and positive identifications have been made in the vast majority of those, and these are ready for return to their loved ones,” Oklahoma state medical examiner’s office spokeswoman Amy Elliott told FoxNews.com in an e-mail Tuesday.
Additionally, after nearly 24 hours of searching, the town’s fire chief said he was confident there were no more bodies or survivors in the rubble.
“I’m 98 percent sure we’re good,” Gary Bird said at a news conference with the governor, who had just completed an aerial tour of the disaster zone.
Authorities were so focused on the search effort that they had yet to establish the full scope of damage along the storm’s long, ruinous path.
The five ranking, on the Enhanced Fujita Scale, puts the tornado in the same class as the deadliest in U.S. history, which hit Joplin, Mo., in 2011, killing 158 and injuring hundreds more.
Several meteorologists consulted by the Associated Press estimated the tornado’s energy released during the storm ranged from 8 times to more than 600 times the power of the Hiroshima bomb, with more experts at the high end. Their calculations were based on energy measured in the air and then multiplied over the size and duration of the storm.
“An EF-5 is as bad as it gets,” said Joe D’Aleo, co-chief forecaster for WeatherBell Analytics. “It’s equivalent to a Category 5 hurricane. It means winds were more than 200 miles per hour, and it means you have to be underground, because there will be nothing left above ground.”
Such devastation was seen in Moore Tuesday, as emergency crews struggled to navigate devastated neighborhoods because there were no street signs left. Some rescuers used smartphones or GPS devices to guide them through areas with no recognizable landmarks.
“We will rebuild and we will regain our strength,” said Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin, who went on a flyover of the area and described it as a “heartbreaking experience” that is “hard to look at.”
Fallin said many houses and buildings have been reduced to “sticks and bricks.” Homes were seen crushed into piles of broken wood. Cars and trucks were left crumpled on the roadside.
“Our prayers are with the people of Oklahoma today,” President Obama said in a Tuesday news conference, expressing gratitude for the residents and first responders who are assisting with the search and rescue efforts, and teachers who shielded their children as the tornado hit two schools.
“The people of Moore should know that their country will remain on the ground there for them, and be beside them as long as it takes,” Obama said. “Oklahoma needs to get everything that it needs right away.”
Fallin announced that the White House approved Oklahoma’s request for disaster assistance for five counties: Cleveland, Lincoln, McClain, Oklahoma and Pottawatomie. Additional damage assessments could be added to the declaration.
Fallin also urged Oklahomans to call 1-800-621-FEMA for help, and said the state set up a website, www.okstrong.ok.gov, for information on available emergency services.
Many land lines to stricken areas were down after the tornado hit, and cellphone networks were congested. The storm was so massive that it will take time to establish communications between rescuers and state officials, Fallin said.
Search-and-rescue teams had concentrated on Plaza Towers Elementary, where the storm ripped off the roof, knocked down walls and destroyed the playground as students and teachers huddled in hallways and bathrooms.
Seven of the nine dead children were killed at the school, but several students were pulled alive from under a collapsed wall and other heaps of mangled debris. Rescue workers passed the survivors down a human chain of parents and neighborhood volunteers. Parents carried children in their arms to a triage center in the parking lot. Some students looked dazed, others terrified.
Neither Plaza Towers nor another school in Oklahoma City that was not as severely damaged had reinforced storm shelters, or safe rooms, said Albert Ashwood is director of the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management.
More than 100 schools across the state do have safe rooms, he said, explaining that it’s up to each jurisdiction to set spending priorities.
Ashwood said a shelter would not necessarily have saved more lives at Plaza Towers.
“When you talk about any kind of safety measures … it’s a mitigating measure, it’s not an absolute,” he told reporters. “There’s not a guarantee that everyone will be totally safe.”
Officials were still trying to account for a handful of children not found at the school who may have gone home early with their parents, Bird said.
James Rushing, who lives across the street from the school, heard reports of the approaching twister and ran to the school, where his 5-year-old foster son, Aiden, attends classes. Rushing believed he would be safer there.
“About two minutes after I got there, the school started coming apart,” he said.
Douglas Sherman drove two blocks from his home to help.
”Just having those kids trapped in that school, that really turns the table on a lot of things, ” he said.
After hearing that the tornado was headed toward another school called Briarwood Elementary, David Wheeler left work and drove 100 mph through blinding rain and gusting wind to find his 8-year-old son, Gabriel. When he got to the school site, “it was like the earth was wiped clean, like the grass was just sheared off, ” Wheeler said.
Eventually, he found Gabriel, sitting with the teacher who had protected him. His back was cut and bruised and gravel was embedded in his head — but he was alive. As the tornado approached, students at Briarwood were initially sent to the halls, but a third-grade teacher — whom Wheeler identified as Julie Simon — thought it didn’t look safe and so ushered the children into a closet, he said.
The teacher shielded Gabriel with her arms and held him down as the tornado collapsed the roof and starting lifting students upward with a pull so strong that it sucked the glasses off their faces, Wheeler said.
”She saved their lives by putting them in a closet and holding their heads down,” Wheeler said.
In video of the storm, the dark funnel cloud could be seen marching slowly across the green landscape. As it churned through the community, the twister scattered shards of wood, awnings and glass all over the streets.
The tornado also destroyed the community hospital and some retail stores. Moore Mayor Glenn Lewis watched it pass through from his jewelry shop.
“All of my employees were in the vault,” Lewis said.
Chris Calvert saw the menacing cloud approaching from about a mile away.
“I was close enough to hear it,” he said. “It was just a low roar, and you could see the debris, like pieces of shingles and insulation and stuff like that, rotating around it.”
Even though his subdivision is a mile from the tornado’s path, it was still covered with debris. He found a picture of a small girl on Santa Claus’ lap in his yard.
A map provided by the National Weather Service showed that the storm began west of Newcastle and crossed the Canadian River into Oklahoma City’s rural far southwestern side about 3 p.m Monday. When it reached Moore, the twister cut a path through the center of town before lifting back into the sky at Lake Stanley Draper.
The National Weather Service issued an initial finding that the tornado was an EF-4 on the enhanced Fujita scale, the second most-powerful type of twister. It also said the tornado was at least a half-mile wide, but other news reports estimated the width to be up to 2 miles.
Monday’s powerful tornado loosely followed the path of a killer twister that slammed the region in May 1999; the storm then had winds clocked at 300 mph.
Kelsey Angle, a weather service meteorologist in Kansas City, Mo., said it’s unusual for two such powerful tornadoes to track roughly the same path. It was the fourth tornado to hit Moore since 1998. A twister also struck in 2003.
Lewis, who was also mayor during the 1999 storm, said the city was already working to recover.
“We’ve already started printing the street signs,” he said. “It took 61 days to clean up after the 1999 tornado. We had a lot of help then. We’ve got a lot of help now.”
Update 2:48pm 5/21/13
MOORE, Okla. – The search for survivors and the dead is nearly complete in the Oklahoma City suburb that was smashed by a mammoth tornado, the fire chief said Tuesday.
Gary Bird said he’s “98 percent sure” there are no more survivors or bodies to recover under the rubble in Moore, a community of 56,000 people.
His comments came after emergency crews spent much of the day searching the town’s broken remnants for survivors of the twister that flattened homes and demolished an elementary school. The storm killed at least 24 people, including at least nine children.
Every damaged home has been searched at least once, Bird said. His goal is to conduct three searches of each location just to be sure. He was hopeful the work could be completed by nightfall, but the efforts were being hampered by heavy rain.
No additional survivors or bodies have been found since Monday night, Bird said.
Earlier in the day, the state medical examiner’s office cut the estimated death toll by more than half. Gov. Mary Fallin vowed to account for every resident.
“We will rebuild, and we will regain our strength,” said Fallin, who went on a flyover of the area and described it as “hard to look at.”
Amy Elliott, a spokeswoman for the medical examiner, said she believes some victims were counted twice in the early chaos of the storm that struck Monday afternoon. Downed communication lines and problems sharing information with officers exacerbated the problem, she said.
“It was a very eventful night,” Elliott said. “I truly expect that they’ll find more today.”
Authorities initially said as many as 51 people were dead, including 20 children.
New search-and-rescue teams moved in at dawn Tuesday, taking over from the 200 or so emergency responders who had worked all night. A helicopter shined a spotlight from above to aid in the search.
Many houses have “just been taken away. They’re just sticks and bricks,” the governor said, describing the 17-mile path of destruction.
More than 200 people have been treated at hospitals.
The National Weather Service said the tornado was an EF5 twister, the most powerful type, with winds of at least 200 mph.
The agency upgraded the tornado from an EF4 on the enhanced Fujita scale to an EF5 based on what a damage-assessment team saw on the ground, spokeswoman Keli Pirtle said Tuesday.
The weather service says the tornado’s path was 17 miles long and 1.3 miles wide.
Emergency crews were having trouble navigating neighborhoods because the devastation was so complete, and there are no street signs left standing, Fallin added.
Other search-and-rescue teams focused their efforts at Plaza Towers Elementary, where the storm ripped off the roof, knocked down walls and turned the playground into a mass of twisted plastic and metal as students and teachers huddled in hallways and bathrooms.
Seven of the nine dead children were killed at the school, but several students were pulled alive from under a collapsed wall and other heaps of mangled debris. Rescue workers passed the survivors down a human chain of parents and neighborhood volunteers. Parents carried children in their arms to a triage center in the parking lot. Some students looked dazed, others terrified.
Officials were still trying to account for a handful of children not found at the school who may have gone home early with their parents, Bird said Tuesday.
Many parents of missing schoolchildren initially came to St. Andrews United Methodist Church, which had been set up as a meeting site. But only high school students were brought to the church, causing confusion and frustration among parents of students enrolled at Plaza Towers. They were redirected to a Baptist church several miles away.
“It was very emotional — some people just holding on to each other, crying because they couldn’t find a child; some people being angry and expressing it verbally” by shouting at one another, said D.A. Bennett, senior pastor at St. Andrews.
After hearing that the tornado was headed toward another school called Briarwood Elementary, David Wheeler left work and drove 100 mph through blinding rain and gusting wind to find his 8-year-old son, Gabriel. When he got to the school site, “it was like the earth was wiped clean, like the grass was just sheared off,” Wheeler said.
Eventually, he found Gabriel, sitting with the teacher who had protected him. His back was cut and bruised and gravel was embedded in his head — but he was alive. As the tornado approached, students at Briarwood were initially sent to the halls, but a third-grade teacher — whom Wheeler identified as Julie Simon — thought it didn’t look safe and so ushered the children into a closet, he said.
The teacher shielded Gabriel with her arms and held him down as the tornado collapsed the roof and starting lifting students upward with a pull so strong that it sucked the glasses off their faces, Wheeler said.
“She saved their lives by putting them in a closet and holding their heads down,” Wheeler said.
The tornado also grazed a theater and leveled countless homes. Authorities were still trying to determine the full scope of the damage.
Roofs were torn off houses, exposing metal rods left twisted like pretzels. Cars sat in heaps, crumpled and sprayed with caked-on mud. Insulation and siding was smashed up against the sides of any walls that remained standing. Yards were littered with pieces of wood, nails and pieces of electric poles.
President Barack Obama declared a major disaster and ordered federal aid to supplement state and local recovery efforts.
“Among the victims were young children trying to take shelter in the safest place they knew — their school,” he said Tuesday.
The town of Moore “needs to get everything it needs right away,” he added.
Obama spoke following a meeting with his disaster-response team, including Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and top White House officials.
The Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., forecast more stormy weather Tuesday in parts of Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana and Oklahoma, including the Moore area.
Monday’s tornado loosely followed the path of a killer twister that slammed the region with 300 mph winds in May 1999. It was the fourth tornado to hit Moore since 1998.
The 1999 storm damaged 600 homes and about 100 businesses. Two or three schools were also hit, but “the kids were out of school, so there were no concerns,” recalled City Manager Steve Eddy.
At the time of Monday’s storm, the City Council was meeting. Local leaders watched the twister approaching on television before taking shelter in the bathroom.
“We blew our sirens probably five or six times,” Eddy said. “We knew it was going to be significant, and there were a lot of curse words flying.”
Monday’s twister came almost exactly two years after an enormous tornado ripped through the city of Joplin, Mo., killing 158 people and injuring hundreds more.
That May 22, 2011, tornado was the deadliest in the United States since modern tornado record keeping began in 1950, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Before Joplin, the deadliest modern tornado was June 1953 in Flint, Mich., when 116 people died.
Update 8:20am 5/21/13 Confusion over Death tally
She said additional bodies could yet be recovered.
Firefighters from more than a dozen fire departments worked all night under bright spotlights trying to find survivors at Plaza Towers Elementary School, which took a direct hit. Rescuers were sent from other states to join the search.
President Barack Obama declared a major disaster area in Oklahoma, ordering federal aid to supplement state and local efforts in Moore after the deadliest U.S. tornado since 161 people were killed in Joplin, Missouri, two years ago.
The White House said Obama would make a statement on the Oklahoma tornado at 10 a.m. EDT (1400 GMT).
“The whole city looks like a debris field,” Glenn Lewis, the mayor of Moore, told NBC.
“It looks like we have lost our hospital. I drove by there a while ago and it’s pretty much destroyed,” Lewis said.
There was an outpouring of grief on Plaza Towers’ Facebook page, with messages from around the country including one pleading simply: “Please find those little children.”
The National Weather Service assigned the twister a preliminary ranking of EF4 on the Enhanced Fujita Scale, meaning the second most powerful category of tornado with winds up to 200 mph (320 kph).
SCHOOL TRAGEDY
U.S. Representative Tom Cole, who lives in Moore, said the Plaza Tower school was the most secure and structurally strong building in the area.
“And so people did the right thing, but if you’re in front of an F4 or an F5 there is no good thing to do if you’re above ground. It’s just tragic,” he said on MSNBC TV.
At least 60 of the 240 people injured were children, hospital officials said.
Witnesses said Monday’s tornado appeared more fierce than the giant twister that was among the dozens that tore up the area on May 3, 1999, killing more than 40 people and destroying thousands of homes. That tornado ranked as an EF5 tornado with wind speeds of more than 200 mph.
The 1999 tornado ranks as the third-costliest tornado in U.S. history, having caused more than $1 billion in damage at the time, or more than $1.3 billion in today’s dollars. Only the devastating Joplin and Tuscaloosa tornadoes in 2011 were more costly.
Monday’s tornado in Moore ranks among the most severe in the United States https://link.reuters.com/gec38t
Jeff Alger, 34, who works in the Kansas oil fields on a fracking crew, said his wife Sophia took their children out of school when she heard a tornado was coming and then fled Moore and watched it flatten the town from a few miles away.
“They didn’t even have time to grab their shoes,” said Alger, who has five children aged 4 to 11. The storm tore part of the roof off of his home. He was with his wife at Norman Regional Hospital to have glass and other debris removed from his wife’s bare feet.
Moore was devastated with debris everywhere, street signs gone, lights out, houses destroyed and vehicles tossed about as if they were toys.
The dangerous storm system threatened several southern Plains states with more twisters.
SAVED BY CELLPHONE
Speaking outside Norman Regional Hospital Ninia Lay, 48, said she huddled in a closet through two storm alerts and the tornado hit on the third.
“I was hiding in the closet and I heard something like a train coming,” she said under skies still flashing with lightning. The house was flattened and Lay was buried in the rubble for two hours until her husband Kevin, 50, and rescuers dug her out.
“I thank God for my cell phone, I called me husband for help.”
Her 7-year-old daughter Catherine, a first-grader at Plaza Towers Elementary School, took shelter with classmates and teachers in a bathroom when the tornado hit and destroyed the school. She escaped with scrapes and cuts.
At Southmoore High School in Moore, about 15 students were in a field house when the tornado hit. Coaches sent them to an interior locker room and made them put on football helmets, the Oklahoman newspaper said. It said the students survived.
The National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center warned the town 16 minutes before the tornado touched down at 3:01 p.m. (2001 GMT), which is greater than the average eight to 10 minutes of warning, said Keli Pirtle, a spokeswoman for the center in Norman, Oklahoma.
The notice was upgraded to emergency warning with “heightened language” at 2:56 p.m., or five minutes before the tornado touched down, Pirtle said.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration imposed a temporary flight restriction that allowed only relief aircraft in the area, saying it was at the request of police who needed quiet to search for buried survivors.
Oklahoma activated the National Guard, and the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency activated teams to support recovery operations and coordinate responses for multiple agencies.
Briarwood Elementary School, which also stood in the storm’s path, was all but destroyed. On the first floor, sections of walls had been peeled away, giving clear views into the building; while in other areas, cars hurled by the storm winds were lodged in the walls. (Additional reporting by Alice Mannette, Lindsay Morris, Nick Carey, Brendan O’Brien and Greg McCune; Writing by Nick Carey and Jane Sutton; Editing by W Simon and Grant McCool)
Update 6:37am 5/21/13
As darkness fell on the tornado-ripped community of Moore, Okla., and the severely damaged areas surrounding Oklahoma City on Monday, at least 91 people, including children, were reported dead as the search for survivors continued. Many undamaged and secure structures, such as churches, served as emergency shelters for those whose homes were destroyed as the result of the 200 mph winds. Government-funded disaster relief teams were joined by faith-based organizations, some already mobilized from previous disaster efforts, for immediate action.
A frantic search for students, teachers and staff at the flattened Plaza Towers Elementary in Moore, which was in the storm’s direct path, continued into Tuesday morning. Reports indicate that 75 third-graders were believed to have been huddled when the tornado struck, with seven now confirmed dead, a number of students showing up alive at a nearby church, and many still missing.
Christian leaders and churches quickly moved into action post-storm by offering housing, comfort, and counseling. On Twitter, #PrayForOklahoma trended most of Monday and into Tuesday morning.
Oakcrest Church of Christ in Oklahoma City, which was still housing evacuees from a storm earlier this month, was open again as a shelter. A group of quilters who usually donate their work to homes for children brought their blankets to the church for displaced residents, said Christyann Anderson, the assistant to Pastor Ben Glover, as reported by Bloomberg News.
Life Bible Church in Norman was open for commuters who could not get home because of the threat of more severe weather or were displaced. Jayson John, a pastor at the church, tweeted late Monday: “We will be picking people up at the Chik-fil-a in Moore who need rides to shelter. Also counselors available at the church 4343 N Flood.”
St. Andrews Church in Oklahoma City also opened as an official shelter.
Read more at https://www.christianpost.com/news/oklahoma-tornado-rips-city-leaving-at-least-91-dead-christian-relief-groups-move-in-96305/#v3OGKOpJURvfPohL.99
Update 6:26am 5/21/13
Moore, Oklahoma (CNN) — Even for a city toughened by disaster, Moore has never seen this kind of devastation.
A massive, howling tornado pulverized a vast swath of the Oklahoma City suburb Monday, chewing up homes and businesses, and severely damaging a hospital and two elementary schools.
The official death toll stood at 51 Tuesday morning, but it was sure to rise. A coroner’s office official said some 40 bodies have yet to be processed by medical examiners — roughly half of them children. More bodies could be hidden under the vast debris field, authorities warned.
Hundreds of people were injured.
Tornado leaves path of destruction
Rescue efforts continue at school
Tornado survivor: I just want to cry
Firefighters, police, National Guard members and volunteers worked by flashlight overnight and into Tuesday morning, crawling across piles of debris in a determined search for survivors and victims. Air National Guard members brought in thermal imaging equipment to aid in the search.
More than 100 people had been pulled from the rubble alive since Monday afternoon, the state Highway Patrol said.
Early Tuesday, authorities asked news crews to move satellite trucks from the scene because the idling engines were making it difficult for rescuers to listen for the faint sounds of survivors beneath the rubble.
“We’re a tough state. This is a tough community,” Lt. Gov. Brian Lamb told CNN on Tuesday. “There is hope. We always have hope. We always have faith.”
Heartbreaking scenes in Oklahoma City after disaster
At least 20 of those killed were children, including seven from Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore, the site of a frantic search since Monday afternoon.
Impact Your World: Helping with disaster in the heartland
The school was in the direct path of the storm. About 75 students and staff members were hunkered down in Plaza Towers when the tornado struck, CNN affiliate KFOR reported.
At one point, an estimated 24 children were missing from the school, but some later turned up at nearby churches. It’s unclear how many may still be trapped in the wreckage, and how many are dead or alive.
On Monday, a father of a third-grader still missing sat quietly on a stool outside. Tears cascaded from his face as he waited for any news.
Even parents of survivors couldn’t wrap their minds around the tragedy.
“I’m speechless. How did this happen? Why did this happen?” Norma Bautista asked. “How do we explain this to the kids? … In an instant, everything’s gone.”
Briarwood Elementary School also suffered a hit, KFOR reported.
Get the latest developments in the story
Across town, Moore Medical Center also took a direct hit.
“Our hospital has been devastated,” Mayor Glenn Lewis said. “We had a two-story hospital, now we have a one. And it’s not occupiable.”
So 145 of the injured were rushed to three other area hospitals.
Rescuers use hands to dig through rubble
Storm witness: ‘I’m blessed to be alive’
Toby Keith: Hometown storm ‘devastting
That number includes 45 children taken to the children’s hospital at Oklahoma University Medical Center, Dr. Roxie Albrecht said. Injuries ranged from minor to severe, including impalement and crushing injuries.
Not the first time
Moore, and the Oklahoma City region, are far too familiar with disaster. In 1995, 168 people died in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City.
In 1999 and then again in 2003, Moore took direct hits from tornadoes that took eerily similar paths to Monday’s storm. The 1999 storm packed the strongest wind speeds in history, Lamb said.
10 deadliest tornadoes on record
This time, the two-mile-wide twister stayed on the ground for a full 40 minutes, carving a 22-mile path where thousands of residents live.
The tornado first touched down in Newcastle, Oklahoma, before ripping into neighboring Moore. An early estimate rated the tornado as an EF4, meaning it had winds between 166 and 200 mph, according to the National Weather Service.
Lamb likened the destruction to a “two-mile-wide lawnmower blade going over a community.”
Storm chaser Lauren Hill was part of a team that recorded video of the massive tornado as it ripped through town.
“You could actually feel the vibration from the tornado itself as it was approaching,” she said.
“We still have a bit of PTSD,” she said. “It’s devastating.”
After the ear-shattering howl subsided, survivors along the miles of destruction emerged from shelters to see an apocalyptic vision. Homes and other buildings were shredded to pieces. Remnants of mangled cars were piled on top of each other. What used to be a parking lot now looked like a junkyard.
“People are wandering around like zombies,” KFOR reporter Scott Hines said. “It’s like they’re not realizing how to process what had just happened.”
The death toll has far surpassed anything the city has seen from a tornado — and is expected to climb.
Hiding in freezers
Hines said rescuers found a 7-month-old baby and its mother hiding in a giant freezer. But they didn’t survive.
At the devastated hospital in Moore, some doctors had to jump into a freezer to survive, Lamb said.
Lando Hite, shirtless and spattered in mud, described how the storm pummeled the Orr Family Farm in Moore, which had about 80 horses before the storm hit.
“It was just like the movie ‘Twister,’ ” Hite told KFOR. “There were horses and stuff flying around everywhere.”
More trouble brewing
But the storm system that spawned Monday’s tornado and several other twisters Sunday isn’t over yet.
Southwest Arkansas and northeast Texas, including Dallas, are under the gun for severe weather Tuesday. Those areas could see large hail, damaging winds and tornadoes.
A broader swath of the United States, from Texas to Indiana and up to Michigan, could see severe thunderstorms.
“We could have a round 3,” CNN meteorologist Ivan Cabrera said. “Hopefully, it won’t be as bad.”
Still digging
The tornado sucked up debris along its path and swirled it several miles into the sky.
“The structures that were just demolished were picked up by the twister here and just jetted up into the atmosphere, 20,000 feet,” Cabrera said.
James Dickens is not a firefighter or medic. He’s actually a gas-and-oil pipeline worker. But that didn’t stop him from grabbing a hard hat and joining other rescuers at Plaza Towers Elementary School.
“I felt it was my duty to come help,” he said Tuesday after a long night of searching.
“As a father, it’s humbling. It’s heartbreaking to know that we’ve still got kids over there that’s possibly alive, but we don’t know.”
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Oklahoma State ME office at 11:54pm – death toll from Monday’s tornado outbreak is now 91. Every Oklahoman has a broken heart to
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Update at 11:08pm
A massive tornado at least a half mile-wide with 200mph winds churned through Oklahoma City’s suburbs Monday afternoon, killing at least 51 people including at least 20 children, flattening entire neighborhoods and destroying an elementary school with a direct blow as children and teachers huddled inside.
Amy Elliott, a spokeswoman for the Oklahoma Medical Examiner’s Office, said at least 51 people were killed and the death toll is expected to rise. Twenty of those deaths are children and Oklahoma City Police say seven of those were children at Plaza Towers Elementary School, which was hit by the tornado, Fox 25 reports. Oklahoma police also told Fox News’ Casey Stegall, on the ground in Moore, Okla., that at least four people were killed at a 7-11 convenience store.
More than 120 people were being treated at hospitals, including about 50 children. And search-and-rescue efforts were to continue throughout the night.
Search and rescue crews were looking for anyone who may be trapped in the rubble. Aerial flyovers showed crowds of residents picking through debris Monday afternoon, while one resident told Fox News that children were trapped under cars at an elementary school.
Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin said in a news conference that “hearts are broken” for parents wondering about the fate of their children, and search and rescue efforts will continue throughout the night.
James Rushing, who lives across the street from the school, heard reports of the approaching twister and ran to the school, where his 5-year-old foster son, Aiden, attends classes. Rushing believed he would be safer there.
“About two minutes after I got there, the school started coming apart,” he said.
The students were sent into the restroom.
A man with a megaphone stood near a Catholic church Monday evening and called out the names of surviving children. Parents waited nearby, hoping to hear their sons’ and daughters’ names.
Don Denton hadn’t heard from his two sons since the tornado hit the town, but the man who has endured six back surgeries and walks with a severe limp said he walked about two miles as he searched for them.
As reports of the storm came in, Denton’s 16-year-old texted him, telling him to call.
“I was trying to call him, and I couldn’t get through,” Denton said.
Eventually, Denton said, his sons spotted him in the crowd. They were fine, but upset to hear that their grandparents’ home was destroyed.
As dusk began to fall, heavy equipment was rolled up to the school, and emergency workers wearing yellow crawled among the ruins, searching for survivors.
Because the ground was muddy, bulldozers and front-end loaders were getting stuck. Crews used jackhammers and sledgehammers to tear away concrete, and chunks were being thrown to the side as the workers dug.
OU Medical Center spokesman Scott Coppenbarger said the hospital and a nearby children’s hospital are treating approximately 85 patients, including 65 children, with conditions ranging from minor injuries to critical.
Integris Southwest Medical Center spokeswoman Brooke Cayot said 9 of 57 patients being treated at that facility Monday are listed in critical condition. Nineteen are in serious and 29 others are listed in fair or good condition.
Cayot said five of the patients at Integris are children, including two who came from the Plaza Towers Elementary School.
Television footage on Monday afternoon showed homes and buildings that had been reduced to rubble in Moore, which is south of Oklahoma City. Footage also showed vehicles littering roadways south and southwest of Oklahoma City.
Briarwood Elementary School in Moore, one of two schools hit, suffered “extensive damage,” according to Gary Knight with the Oklahoma City Police Department.
At the Plaza Towers Elementary School, students were hugging and clinging to the walls of the school as the tornado passed over, KFOR reports.
An Associated Press photographer saw several children being pulled out of what was left of the school. The school’s roof appeared mangled and the walls had fallen in or had collapsed.
While the tornado was passing over the school, students were hugging and clinging to the walls, KFOR reports. There are 24 students believed to be in the rubble at the school, but the report could not be confirmed.
Children from the school were among the dead, but several students were pulled alive from the rubble. Rescue workers passed the survivors down a human chain to the triage center in the parking lot.
A Norman, Okla. regional health system spokesperson also told Fox News that Moore Medical Center, the only hospital in the city, also suffered “extensive structural damage,” as the tornado demolished the second floor of the hospital and tore off part of the roof.
The center evacuated 30 patients to two other hospitals in Norman, Okla.
The National Weather Service said the tornado was on the ground for nearly 40 minutes, with the first tornado warning coming 16 minutes before it touched down. The preliminary damage rating on the enhanced fujita scale was EF4 — the second most-powerful type of twister — and carved a 20-mile path through Newcastle, Moore and South Oklahoma City.
Oklahoma City Police Capt. Dexter Nelson said downed power lines and open gas lines now a risk for rescue teams in the aftermath of the system.
The Oklahoma Department of Transportation closed I-35 in both directions near Norman, Okla., to assist with cleaning up the debris.
“This is absolute devastation like nothing I’ve ever seen before,” Betsy Randolph, with Oklahoma State Police, told Fox 25.” This may be worse than the May 3rd, 1999 tornado.”
The strongest winds on earth — 302 mph — were recorded near Moore that year.
On Monday night, President Barack Obama spoke with Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin to express his concern for those impacted by the storm. Obama declared the area around Moore, Okla., a major disaster zone and said FEMA was ready to provide all available assistance as part of the recovery.
In a statement, a spokesperson for FEMA said it is “closely monitoring the impacts of the storm and remains in close contact with emergency officials to ensure there are not any unmet needs.”
“Our thoughts and prayers go out to everyone impacted by the tornadoes and severe weather in Oklahoma,” Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano said, urging residents to listen to the direction of state and local officials.
In advance of the storm, the Oklahoma House of Representatives stopped work so Capitol employees could take shelter in the basement. Television and radio broadcasters urged residents to take shelter because the storm’s strength and size.
The Storm Prediction Center in Norman had predicted a major outbreak of severe weather Monday in Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma. The National Weather Service has also issuedtornado watches and warnings for counties in Missouri, Nebraska, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas.
On Sunday, at least two people were killed and 29 were injured in Oklahoma as a severe storm system generated several tornadoes in Kansas, Oklahoma and Iowa, leveling neighborhoods and sending frightened residents scurrying for shelter as extreme conditions are expected to linger across the Midwest.
The tornadoes, high winds and hail have been part of a massive, northeastward-moving storm system that has stretched from Texas to Minnesota.
“It’s pretty bad. It’s pretty much wiped out.”
– Pottawatomie County Sheriff Mike Booth
At least four separate twisters touched down in central Oklahoma late Sunday afternoon, including one near the town of Shawnee, 35 miles southeast of Oklahoma City, that laid waste to much of a mobile home park.
Oklahoma state medical examiner’s office spokeswoman Amy Elliott on Monday said the two people killed in the tornado were 79-year-old Glen Irish and 76-year-old Billy Hutchinson. Both men were from Shawnee.
Pottawatomie County Sheriff Mike Booth said one man, later identified as Irish, was found dead out in the open at Steelman Estates, but the sheriff didn’t have details on where he had lived.
“You can see where there’s absolutely nothing, then there are places where you have mobile home frames on top of each other, debris piled up,” Booth said. “It looks like there’s been heavy equipment in there on a demolition tour … It’s pretty bad. It’s pretty much wiped out.”
A storm spotter told the National Weather Service that the tornado “scoured” the landscape in the park and an area along Interstate 40. Officials said drivers should expect delays along the highway in Shawnee as crews continue to clean up storm debris. Westbound Interstate 40 was closed Sunday night at U.S. 177 after storms ripped through the area. U.S. 177 was also shut down because of vehicle accidents caused by the severe weather.
The Oklahoma Department of Transportation said northbound U.S. 177 at I-40 was reopened as of 7 a.m. Monday.
Gov. Mary Fallin declared an emergency for 16 Oklahoma counties because of the severe storms and flooding. The declaration lets local governments acquire goods quickly to respond to their residents’ needs and puts the state in line for federal help if it becomes necessary.
Another tornado grazed the Oklahoma City suburb of Edmond Sunday afternoon, dropping hail as large as a grapefruit and damaging roofs and structures before heading east. Aerial flyovers in Wellston, northeast of Oklahoma City, showed significant property damage.
Dozen of counties in Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois and Missouri were placed under tornado watches and warnings that were in effect through late Sunday.
In Wichita, Kan., a tornado touched down near Mid-Content Airport on the city’s southwest side shortly before 4 p.m., knocking out power to thousands of homes and businesses but bypassing the most populated areas of Kansas’ biggest city. The Wichita tornado was an EF1 — the strength of tornado on the enhanced Fujita scale — with winds of 110 mph, according to the weather service.
The National Weather Service also reported two tornadoes touched down in Iowa Sunday — near Huxley and Earlham. Damage included the loss of some cattle when the storm blew over a barn on a farm in Mitchell County. Some 11,000 homes were without power early Monday.
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Update 05/20/13 5:47 pm:
MOORE, Okla. (CBS Houston/AP) — At least two dozen children were reportedly killed at an elementary school after a monstrous tornado as much as a mile wide with winds up to 200 mph roared through the Oklahoma City suburbs Monday, flattening entire neighborhoods, setting buildings on fire and landing a direct blow on an elementary school.
The storm laid waste to scores of buildings in Moore, south of the city. Block after block of the community lay in ruins, with heaps of debris piled up where homes used to be. Cars and trucks were left crumpled on the roadside. KFOR-TV reports that up to 24 children were killed at the Tower Plaza Elementary School. The Associated Press reports that several children were pulled out alive from Tower Plaza. Rescue workers lifted children from the rubble before they were passed down a human chain and taken to a triage center set up in the school’s parking lot.
All of the children at the elementary school that took the direct blow, Briarwood Elementary School, have been accounted for, according to KWTV.
Television footage shows flattened buildings and fires after a mile-wide tornado moved through the Oklahoma City area Monday afternoon, the Associated Press reports.
KOTVcalled it a “huge tornado” with a “violent rotation.” A storm tracker speculated the twister was either an F4 or F5. A storm tracker also said “there’s houses in the air here” and noted “a ton of debris.” They reporters described houses, trees and more in the tornado as the “debris ball.” An elementary school — thought to be Briarwood Elementary in Moore — is also said to have been hit with some children potentially being trapped.
National Weather Service meteorologists and storm spotters reported hail up to the size of tennis balls as well.
The Oklahoma House of Representatives canceled its afternoon sessions so Capitol employees and state lawmakers could take shelter. Sirens blared and workers made their way to the Capitol basement.
Oklahoma City’s southeastern suburbs were hit by a storm Sunday and two people died. Monday’s storm is in an area that is more densely populated.
KWTV’s reporters described it as looking similar to the violent twister hit May 3, 1999.
Video showed homes and buildings in Moore, Okla., that were reduced to rubble, and vehicles littered roadways south and southwest of Oklahoma City.
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