The storm laid waste to scores of buildings in Moore, a community of 41,000 people about 10 miles south of the city. Block after block lay in ruins. Homes were crushed into piles of broken wood. Cars and trucks were left crumpled on the roadside.
Plaza Towers Elementary School was flattened by the storm and Briarwood Elementary School was also reportedly severely hit. It is unclear at this time how many people were at the schools when the damage occurred, but search and rescue efforts are underway.
"Apparently some kids were being sheltered there [at Plaza Towers]," local TV station KFOR reported during its live coverage of the tornado. The local news outlet laterconfirmed that children were being pulled from debris at the Plaza Towers site.
At least one tornado touched down near Oklahoma City Monday, leaving behind a wake of destruction. The twister hit only one day after a similar tornado killed two in Shawnee.
MOORE, Okla., May 20 (Reuters) - A 2-mile-wide (3-km-wide) tornado tore through the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore on Monday, killing at least 51 people while destroying entire tracts of homes, piling cars atop one another, and trapping two dozen school children beneath rubble.
Twenty of the 51 confirmed deaths were children, the Oklahoma medical examiner said, and at least 45 of the 230 people injured were children, according to area hospitals. It was the deadliest U.S. tornado since one killed 161 people in Joplin, Missouri, two years ago.
President Barack Obama declared a major disaster area in Oklahoma, ordering federal aid to supplement state and local efforts.
Rescue teams raced against the setting sun and worked into the darkness in search of survivors throughout the wide swath of devastation, while the dangerous storm system threatened several southern Plains states with more twisters. Severe weather was expected through the night from the Great Lakes south to Texas.
Emergency crews searched the rubble of Plaza Towers Elementary School for two dozen missing children, Oklahoma Lieutenant Governor Todd Lamb said. The school took a direct hit from the tornado, Lamb told CNN.
The town of Moore, population about 50,000, was devastated with debris everywhere, street signs gone, lights out and houses completely obliterated.
Another elementary school and a hospital were among the buildings leveled.
"We thought we died because we were inside the cellar door...It ripped open the door and just glass and debris started slamming on us and we thought we were dead to be honest," survivor Ricky Stover said while surveying the devastated remains of his home.
Cyndi Christopher was at work and went to pick up her son from daycare when she heard the storm warning. After taking her son home, she was forced to flee when she noticed the storm was coming their way.
"I drove as fast as I could and I outran the storm," Christopher said.
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 miles per hour (320 km per hour).
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, meaning it had winds over 200 mph.
The 1999 event in Oklahoma 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.
The National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center provided the town with a warning 16 minutes before the tornado touched down at 3:01 p.m. local time (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.
Television media measured the tornado at more than 2 miles wide, with images showing entire neighborhoods flattened.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) imposed a temporary flight restriction that allowed only relief aircraft in the area, saying it was at the request of local police who wanted quiet to search for buried survivors.
Oklahoma activated the National Guard, and the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency activated teams to supp
ort recovery operations and coordinate responses for multiple agencies.
SCHOOL IN TWISTER'S PATH
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, affording clear views into the building, while in other areas, cars hurled by the storm winds were lodged in the walls.
Across the street, people picked through the remains of their homes.
The number of injured as reported by several hospitals rose rapidly throughout the afternoon.
Oklahoma University Medical Center alone was treating 65 patients, 45 of them children, though it was no longer expecting a further mass influx of casualties, spokesman Scott Coppenbarger said.
Moore Medical Center sustained significant damage.
"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.
The massive twister struck at the height of tornado season, and more were forecast. On Sunday, tornadoes killed two people and injured 39 in Oklahoma. (Additional reporting by Lindsay Morris, Carey Gillam, Nick Carey, Brendan O'Brien and Greg McCune; Writing by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Jim Loney and Lisa Shumaker)
LAKE MILLE LACS, Minn. (AP) — Strong winds have pushed huge ice sheets ashore at a northern Minnesota lake and right up to people's doorsteps.
WCCO-TV reports that the ice from Lake Mille Lacs (MILL LAX) reached the doors and windows at the Izatys (eye-ZEHT'-ees) Resort on Saturday morning.
National Weather Service Meteorologist Shawn Devinny says 30 to 40 mile an hour winds pushed the water into the ice, driving it ashore. He says the winds were lighter Sunday and the shoreline got a reprieve.
The Department of Natural Resources says about 10 miles of shoreline are covered, with some reaching up to 30 feet high.
MANILA, Philippines — One of the Philippines' most active volcanoes spewed huge rocks and ash after daybreak Tuesday, killing at least five climbers and trapping more than a dozen others near the crater in its first eruption in three years, officials said.
Rescue teams and helicopters were sent to Mayon volcano in the central Philippines to bring out the dead. At least seven were injured from a group of about 20 mountaineers who were caught by surprise by the sudden eruption, Albay provincial Gov. Joey Salceda said. Clouds have cleared over the volcano, which was quiet later in the morning.
The climbers who died were struck by huge rocks, guide Kenneth Jesalva told ABS-CBN TV network by cellphone from a camp near the crater. They included a German, an Austrian and a Filipino.
The injured included foreigners and Filipino guides. Some were in critical condition, said the chief of the national disaster agency, Eduardo del Rosario.
Jesalva said he was in the group that spent the night on the picturesque mountain, known for its almost-perfect cone, when the volcano rumbled back to life early in the morning and rocks "as big as a living room" came raining down on them. He rushed back to the base camp to call for help.
The head of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology, Renato Solidum, said Tuesday's eruption was normal for the restive Mayon, about 340 kilometers (212 miles) southeast of Manila. It has erupted about 40 times during the last 400 years.
In 2010, thousands of residents moved to temporary shelters when the volcano ejected ash in an 8-kilometer (5-mile) zone surrounding the crater.
Solidum said that no alert was raised for the volcano following the latest eruption and no evacuation was being planned. Climbers are not allowed when an alert is up, and the recent calm may have encouraged this week's trek.
GRAFTON, Ill. -- The Mississippi River is topping out at some problematic spots, but there is growing concern that spring floods are far from over.
The river was at or near crest at several places Sunday between the Quad Cities and near St. Louis. Some towns in the approximate 100-mile stretch of river from Quincy, Ill., to Grafton, Ill., reached 10-12 feet above flood stage.
The good news was that most businesses and homes were high and dry, though hundreds of acres of farmland were under water, bridges were closed at Quincy and Louisiana, Mo., and countless roads were shutdown.
But river towns aren't yet in the clear: An inch or more of rain is in the forecast as well as continuing accumulation of snow to the north, especially in Minnesota and the Dakotas. Flood watchers along both the Missouri and Mississippi rivers know that once that snow – record levels in some cases – melts, a lot of it ends up in the big rivers.
The current flooding is bad enough. In scenic Grafton, a small tourist town 40 miles north of St. Louis, floodwater 3 inches deep seeped into the basement of Pam and Dennis Bick's home where they've lived for four decades.
"We have time to figure out what to do, where we would go and where we would put everything," Pam Bick, 57, said. "I don't want it to come up any more. But I can't stop it."
Rain last week started the whole mess, causing the Mississippi and many other rivers to surge in Missouri, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan and Indiana. Flooding has now been blamed in three deaths – two at the same spot in Indiana and one in Missouri. In all three cases, vehicles were swept off the road in flash floods.
Spots south of St. Louis aren't expected to crest until late this week, and significant flooding is possible in places like Ste. Genevieve, Mo., Cape Girardeau, Mo., and Cairo, Ill.
Adding to concern is the forecast. National Weather Service meteorologist Julie Phillipson said an inch of rain is likely in many places Monday night into Tuesday, some places could receive more than that."That's not what we want to see when we have this kind of flooding, that's for sure," Phillipson said.
In La Grange, Mo., sandbags were holding back the murky Mississippi River water at City Hall, a bank and a handful of threatened homes, and the water was dropping. This flood was little more than an inconvenience, Lewis County emergency management director David Keith said.
"What we're worried about now is all that snow melt in North and South Dakota and Minnesota,"Keith said, referencing the state's mounds of April snow.
Forecasters said up to 6 inches of new snow were possible in the Black Hills area of South Dakota through Monday morning. But AccuWeather meteorologist Alan Reppert said it may stay cold long enough to the north to make for a gradual melt. Of greater concern, he said, is the Red River in North Dakota, which could see significant flooding in the coming weeks.
By Sunday, sandbagging had all but stopped in Clarksville, Mo., evidence of the confidence in the makeshift sandbag levee hurriedly erected to protect downtown. The river Sunday was about 10 feet above flood stage and expected to rise another foot before cresting Monday.
"We believe we'll have a successful conclusion," said Jo Anne Smiley, longtime mayor of the 442-resident hamlet.
In Grand Rapids, Mich., Mayor George Heartwell declared a state of emergency as the flooding Grand River poured into the basements of several hotels and other downtown buildings.
Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn declared at least 41 counties disaster areas from flooding. The Fox River in northern Illinois reached record levels, and several records were possible along the Illinois River.
Indiana officials were still determining if flooded communities like Kokomo, Tipton and Elwood will be eligible for disaster aid.
SHUQUALAK, Miss. — A strong spring storm that socked the Midwest with ice and heavy, wet snow made its way east, raking the South with tornadoes Thursday, with three deaths blamed on the rough weather and thousands of people without power.
Mississippi Emergency Management Agency spokesman Greg Flynn said Thursday one person died and several people were injured after a reported tornado struck Kemper County in the far-eastern part of the state.
At Contract Fabricators Inc. in Kemper County, where authorities said one person died and another was injured, bent pieces of tin hung from the heavily damaged building. A tractor trailer was twisted and overturned. Debris from the business was strewn through the woods across the street.
Tabatha Lott, a dispatcher in Noxubee County, said there were "numerous reports of injuries" in the town of Shuqualak, though it wasn't immediately clear how many. Flynn also said there are reports of damaged buildings and many power outages.
The T-shaped system first swept across the nation's midsection Wednesday night and pummeled portions of Missouri, where the National Weather Service said Thursday that an EF-2 tornado appears to have damaged dozens of homes in the St. Louis suburb of Hazelwood. That category of tornado generally packs winds of 113 to 157 mph.
Derek Cody, an amateur storm chaser who works at East Mississippi Community College in Scooba, just south of Shuqualak (pronounced SHUG-a-lock), told The Associated Press that he drove north to the small town to try to catch a glimpse of the tornado.
He said he got out of his car on U.S. 45 just as the twister was approaching the highway, only to be hit by a strong gust of wind moving into the storm that almost knocked him over.
"I kind of sat there and hoped it would cross right in front of me," Cody said. "It was just a black mass that moved across the road."
Cody said that the center of Shuqualak, an eastern Mississippi town of 500 people, was unaffected. But he said a gas station and about 10 or so houses west of the town center were damaged. He said one house was "completely flattened" with debris blown across the road.
As the system was moving through the Southeast, high winds knocked over trees and power lines in rural west Alabama and eastern Mississippi. About 50 school systems in central and north Alabama sent students home early, and a few government offices and businesses also closed early. By late Thursday, the weather service was receiving reports of quarter- to baseball-sized hail in northeastern Georgia and western parts of the Carolinas.
In Shuqualak, Kathy Coleman, 57, said she was outside her home signing for a delivery of her dialysis medication when the deliveryman hustled her back in to the house. Coleman said she, the deliveryman and her housekeeper huddled in the bathroom as the storm hit.
"All I could hear was trees breaking and falling and glass. He started praying and I started praying. Thank God he was here," she said.
The line of severe storms was trudging east toward Georgia, where the world's best golfers are playing in the Masters at Augusta National. The weather was warm and sunny on the first day of the four-day tournament but severe storms were forecast overnight.
Late Thursday, Tennessee authorities declared a state of emergency after a possible tornado was reported in Monroe County, in the far-eastern part of the state.
Behind it in Missouri and neighboring Illinois, crews with the weather service still were assessing whether tornadoes were to blame for other damage, meteorologist Mark Fuchs said. Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon declared a state of emergency shortly after the storm swept through the eastern part of Missouri, bringing hail, up to 2 1/2 inches of rain and strong winds.
Utility workers scrambled to restore power to more than 23,000 still-affected Missouri homes and businesses. One utility worker for Ameren Missouri was electrocuted while doing electrical work to repair damage, the company said. The company says he was taken to an area hospital but did not survive.
In the upper Midwest, thousands of homes and businesses also lost power because of heavy wet snow, ice and wind in the past couple of days, while rain and snow raised flooding concerns in various areas of the Midwest. A suspected tornado caused damage in Arkansas.
Authorities said Thursday that flooding from heavy rain and melting snow has sent some rivers over their banks and has closed roads in parts of Michigan's Lower Peninsula.
A third death was reported in the Nebraska Pandhandle, where a woman perished Tuesday when she tried to trudge through a blinding snowstorm from her disabled car to her house a mile away.
On Wednesday, seven members of the Sullivan, Mo., municipal airport board were gathered at the airport Wednesday night for a meeting. A member noticed what looked like funnel clouds over the 7,000-resident town about 65 miles southwest of St. Louis. Then, a wind-blown pickup truck then scooted by – without a driver. The gust was clocked at 101 mph.
"The city administrator said his ears were popping, then all of a sudden the building shook and the windows shook," board member Larry Cuneio said. "I'm the street commissioner and I've seen wind do a lot of things, but never anything like this."
Across the Mississippi River in Alton, Ill., Dave Grounds was watching TV when he heard the rain suddenly intensify, followed by winds that he said had "incredible resonance."
"That's when the house started shaking violently, like it was grabbed by both sides," said Grounds, a judge for Madison County's juvenile court. "I thought it was an earthquake, and that's when things started collapsing."
Two large trees – one oak and the other ash, each a century old – toppled onto one end of his house of 43 years, caving in his bedroom and crushing two of his vehicles.
"Electricity lines came down and started sparking like it was the Fourth of July, and the whole house filled with smoke," said Grounds, 64.
At least eight homes were damaged in the St. Louis neighborhood known as the Hill, famous for its Italian heritage and restaurants. Mobile homes were blown over in parts of Franklin and Washington counties, not far from St. Louis.
Fuchs said the storm, which affected numerous states, was the result of a clash of warm and cold air – typical for spring.
A tornado with winds of 111-135 mph hit Botkinburg in north-central Arkansas on Wednesday and injured four people, National Weather Service forecasters said Thursday. It was rated as an EF-2 storm on a scale measuring tornado severity. EF-5 is the highest. Wednesday's storm was 400 yards wide at its peak.
In South Dakota, snow and ice shut down several roads, including Interstate 90 for a time.
The weather service said the system could extend into flood-prone southeastern North Dakota, where about 3 to 5 inches of snow is expected through late Thursday.
"Any additional precipitation at this stage in the game is not necessarily a good thing," said Peter Rogers in Grand Forks.
In Minnesota, Gov. Mark Dayton declared a state of emergency Thursday after a spring snowstorm heaped more headaches on the southwest corner of Minnesota, where communities are still struggling to restore power following an ice storm earlier in the week. Officials said it might be early next week before electricity was restored in the southwest.
A trio of extreme kayakers recently took their daredevilry to scorching heights when they paddled in a red-hot lava "river" near an active volcano.
As this stunning video shows, professional kayakers Pedro Oliva, Chris Korbulic and Ben Stookesberry had been on an expedition in Hawaii when they came across the fiery Kilauea volcano, which is one of the most active in the world.
The trio paddled within feet of the blistering lava flows that spewed from the volcano into the waters below, before taking to the expanding lava coastline on foot.
"The goal of our expedition was to find rivers and waterfalls in Hawaii and the possibility of finding a river of lava was so enticing," Oliva, who is from Brazil, said in the video. "The feeling of arriving [at Kilauea] in the very first light of the day and seeing the lava flowing into the ocean was really unforgettable."
As MSN notes, the three kayakers had been in Hawaii to film the latest segment of the Brazilian TV show, "Kaiak."
Featuring incredible footage of Oliva, Korbulic and Stookesberry exploring the most extreme kayaking destinations in the world, the TV program has shown the trio in locations all over the planet, including Norway, Greenland and Brazil.
But as exciting as their adventures seem, Oliva pointed out in the video that his team's extreme kayaking antics are often extremely dangerous and should not be attempted by non-professionals.
"I hope people don't see these images and think that it is safe," said Oliva of his recent brush with the steaming volcano.
"The actual ocean itself would burn your hand if you put it in there," Stookesberry told Barcroft Media of the boiling waters they kayaked on during their volcano expedition, according to AOL Travel.
SEATTLE — Some residents evacuated from hillside homes on Washington state's Whidbey Island after a large landslide are being told they can return, now that geologists have taken a preliminary look at the area.
One house was knocked off its foundation and 33 others were evacuated after the slide hit early Wednesday. Central Whidbey Fire and Rescue Chief Ed Hartin says residents of 15 homes were told Wednesday evening they could return if they wished.
No injuries have been reported.
Hartin says emergency personnel evacuated a resident from the damaged home by all-terrain vehicle, reaching him by cutting across property owned by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. The chief says Ballmer's home and property are not threatened.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
Residents of a hillside overlooking scenic Puget Sound heard the thunder of a large landslide early Wednesday that knocked one home off its foundation, and isolated or threatened more than two dozen others on Whidbey Island, about 50 miles north of Seattle.
A man who escaped from the damaged home was evacuated by rescuers in an all-terrain vehicle, Central Whidbey Fire and Rescue Chief Ed Hartin said. Some people are completely cut off from their properties.
Many of the homes are summer cabins or weekend getaways and were unoccupied. Some are larger, upscale properties and others are more modest dwellings.
Eleven people from 16 homes along a road close to the water were evacuated by boat because the road was blocked by the landslide, he said.
And, another 20 to 25 people were evacuated from 17 homes along a road higher up the hill that is being undermined by the slide. Land is falling away just 10 feet from one home.
No one was injured when the slide broke loose about 4 a.m. in the Ledgewood community. One person was taken to a hospital with a condition unrelated to the slide.
The cause of the slide is unknown.
Residents that heard the slide about eight miles south of Coupeville described it to KOMO-TV as sounding like thunder.
"It was a mix of rumbling and snapping trees," Hartin said. "We were hearing the same thing when we arrived."
On Wednesday afternoon the slide still showed signs of movement, Hartin said.
"It's possible more homes could be lost. We're trying to ensure the safety and awareness of people," Hartin said. "There's not anything we can do to stop the movement of the ground."
Whidbey Island is about 35 miles long, north to south, and just a mile or two wide in places east to west.
The slide area extends about 400 to 500 yards across the hillside and down 600 or 700 yards to the water, Hartin said.
There has been no significant rain in recent days so the immediate cause of the slide is unknown. But the area has been prone to slides in the past, Hartin said.
A geotechnical expert was being brought in to assess the slide and the danger to homes. If the slide stabilizes, some people might be allowed to return. But others have homes that are now unreachable.
"Being cut off from the road, water and power," residents had to leave, said Island County Sheriff Mark Brown. "It's a pretty massive mudslide."
A ferry ride from the Seattle area, the island offers picturesque farm and water views and has a population of about 60,000, mostly centered around Oak Harbor and the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station.
