Dozens killed when
huge tornado levels Oklahoma City suburb
Tornado near Oklahoma City causes more
damage: A violent twister carved a long and destructive path on the
south side of Oklahoma City in the latest of a recent rash of tornadoes.
On Sunday, several tornadoes struck parts of the nation’s midsection,
concentrating damage in central Oklahoma and Wichita.
Rescue crews were
searching Tuesday for survivors and victims of a
massive tornado that had devastated a suburb of
Oklahoma City, grinding up entire neighborhoods and
pulverizing two elementary schools.
A total of 24 people were confirmed dead as of
Tuesday morning, said Amy Elliott, a spokeswoman for the
medical examiner’s officer. The toll was considerably
lower than the 51 fatalities reported in the hours after
Monday’s storm, but Elliott cautioned that the numbers
were still preliminary and were likely to rise as search
and rescue efforts continued.
The swath of destruction that cut through
Moore, Okla., was up to a mile wide and 20 miles long. More
than 100 people were reported injured.
“There are empty spaces where there used to be living rooms
and bedrooms and classrooms,” President Obama said Tuesday
morning, after declaring the area a federal disaster and
dispatching his top emergency management official to survey the
damage. “In some cases, there will be enormous grief that has to
be absorbed. But you will not travel that path alone. Your
country will travel it with you.”
(See the latest updates on the tornado here.)
Seven children’s bodies were taken from the obliterated Plaza
Towers Elementary School on Monday, said Oklahoma City police
Sgt. Jennifer Wardlow. Officials believe more young victims are
trapped, and dead, in the rubble. “Unfortunately I think that
number’s going to grow,” Wardlow said.
Some youngsters were pulled from the debris, wet and dirty
but alive. In television interviews, a few said teachers used
their bodies to shield students from airborne debris. Dozens of
rescuers in hard hats continued to pick through the wreckage. In
all, Oklahoma Highway Patrol spokeswoman Betsy Randolph told
CNN, 101 people had been pulled alive from collapsed buildings
by early Tuesday.
“Our hearts are broken,”
Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin (R) said in an interview on NBC’s
“Today” show. “This is bigger than anything I’ve ever seen. It’s
absolutely huge. It’s horrific.”
Wardlow said most members of the Oklahoma City police force
were assisting with the rescue effort, and many off-duty
officers had come in to help as well.
In addition to the destroyed elementary school, crews are
searching block after block of leveled houses and commercial
buildings. The level of devastation is so complete, Wardlow
said, that crews have virtually no street signs, house numbers
or other landmarks to guide them.
“It’s just a process of going house to house,” Wardlow said.
“These are entire neighborhoods gone – just wiped clean. It’s
the worst possible scenario.”
On the Enhanced Fujita damage scale of tornadoes, the storm
that struck Monday afternoon was probably a 4 or 5, at the
highest ends of violence, with winds reaching 200 miles per
hour, said Russell Schneider, director of the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Storm Prediction Center
in Norman, Okla., about eight miles from the path of the storm.
That’s likely, said Tim Samaras, a storm researcher whose
work is supported by the National Geographic Society. He said
schools in Oklahoma are not built to withstand such powerful
tornadoes, and the practice of sheltering in interior hallways
is insufficient when a school takes a direct hit.
“The only way you’re going to solve that problem is to build
tornado-proof rooms in these schools that can hold 500 to 700 children,”
Samaras said. “Unfortunately it comes down to cost. There is no part in
a school building that can withstand an EF4 or EF5 tornado. None.”
Craig Fugate, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management
Agency, was headed to Oklahoma Tuesday morning to monitor the federal
assistance effort. “Oklahoma needs to get everything that it needs,
right away,” Obama said. “The people of Moore should know that their
country will remain on the ground there for them, beside them, as long
as it takes.”
Helicopter footage showed a wide path of near-total destruction in
Moore, which endured a similarly powerful twister 14 years ago. In
addition to Plaza Towers, another elementary school, Briarwood, was
demolished. All students at that school were accounted for, according to
local news reports.
Block after block, cars and trucks were heaped on top of one another.
Home were reduced to foundations covered with splintered wood. “I’m sick
to my stomach,” said Jayme Shelton, a spokesman for the city of Moore.
“Send your prayers this way.”
Police officers and firefighters were going door-to-door, checking
for people who might be trapped in the rubble. Search-and-rescue teams
poured in from every corner of the state.
“This is terrible. This is war-zone terrible,” said a helicopter
reporter for KFOR-TV (Channel 4) in Oklahoma City. “This whole area is
destroyed. The houses are destroyed, completely leveled.”
The tornado outbreak was part of an explosion of violent weather that
slashed the nation’s midsection, inciting severe-weather alerts from
Texas to Michigan. The atmospheric conditions include a powerful weather
system from the west colliding with warm, moist air from the Gulf of
Mexico, a perfect recipe for tornadoes and super-cell thunderstorms,
Schneider said.
Tornado Alley is braced for another active day Tuesday. Much of
Oklahoma, mostly southeast of Oklahoma City and Moore, faces severe
weather and the possibility of tornadoes, straight-line winds up to 70
miles per hour and golf-ball-size hail, according to the
National
Weather Service.
More broadly, the weather service predicts
tornadoes could pop out of a line of thunderstorms forecast to move
through Texas and Arkansas. The Storm Prediction Center has outlined a
sprawling risk area from central Texas to Michigan. More than 50 million
people reside in the designated severe weather risk zones.
The Storm Prediction Center counted nine tornadoes Monday in
Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas, although that was a preliminary number based
on witness reports. Although much of that region of the country is
rural, one monster cell ground its way directly through the southern
suburbs of Oklahoma City — an urban hit that brought to mind the
Tuscaloosa, Ala., tornado of April 27, 2011 (64 dead), and the Joplin,
Mo., tornado on May 22 the same year (160 dead).
The strength of the big tornado that hit Moore will be determined in
coming days after closer scrutiny of the damage. The twister was on the
ground for 40 minutes, ravaging a 20-mile path, Schneider said.
“This was a very unfortunate path for this powerful storm,” he said.
He noted that the likelihood of severe weather and tornadoes had been
forecast many days in advance and that tornado watches had preceded the
twister. But this was so powerful a storm, with such devastating winds,
that people needed to be in basements or, better yet, a storm shelter,
to be safe.
“You really need to be below ground,” Schneider said.
The residents there had seen this kind of thing before, on May 3,
1999, when more than 40 people were killed by a tornado that struck
Moore, Newcastle, Del City and other towns. That tornado reportedly
spawned winds that reached 318 mph, the highest ever scientifically
recorded, according to a 2005 story in USA Today.
The injured were taken to multiple hospitals in the area, including
20 people, eight of them children, to Oklahoma University Medical
Center, said spokesman Scott Coppenbarger.
About 60 people were taken to Norman Regional Hospital and Norman
HealthPlex Hospital, said Kelly Wells, spokeswoman for Norman Regional
Health Care. She described the injuries as “a lot of trauma, a lot of
lacerations, a lot of broken bones. Typical tornado injuries. We’re no
stranger to this out here.”
The two hospitals also received more than 30 patients from Moore
Medical Center, the third hospital in Norman Regional’s network, which
was destroyed by the tornado, Wells said.
By Monday evening, a Facebook page created to help connect survivors
with loved ones had a growing number of posts, most from people
searching for the missing.
“Looking for my Aunt Iris Irwin,” read one post.
“Looking for 5yo Harry,” read another.
Lenny Bernstein, Brady Dennis, Darryl Fears and Jason Samenow
contributed to this report.
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