still scared and we see a lot of tears and we re trying to reassure people, just telling them they ll be okay. they re this the safest place they can be. but it s a very sad scene as hundreds of people, many of them who lost relatives, many who lost their homes, are in this shelter fearing a tornado is closing in on them. yeah. gary, we ll continue to check in with you as we continue to track this storm. when we come back, i want to show you how resilient the people here are in joplin. i know that s a word tossed around a lot on tv and becomes a cliche. but some cliches are true. you re going to meet a woman named sally smith, as she was picking up the pieces of her life and helping out her mom. the question we wanted to ask, is how do you restart your life? her answers ahead.
reed, appreciate you joining us. thank you very much. the winds have started to pick up here and the temperature is dropping significantly. it s now getting chilly here. when we come back, we re going to show you some of the damage here in joplin. it is i got to tell you, it s hard to absorb and as one person said, the pictures don t do it justice. also the latest on rescue efforts and another survivor story. the search for a missing toddler, the search for a missing mom, who was in her car when the tornado hit. so much to tell you about. stay with us. [ male announcer ] in 2011, at&t is at work, building up our wireless network all across america. we re adding new cell sites. increasing network capacity, and investing billions of dollars to improve your wireless network experience. from a single phone call to the most advanced data download, we re covering more people in more places than ever before in an effort to give you the best network possible.
have their homes to go to. even those homes, they didn t have basements in those homes. they were just built on concrete slabs. right. and the potential here is that all of that debris, that clearly is out there, will be picked up by the wind, easter in a severe thunderstorm, gusts of 50 or 60 miles per hour or picked up in a new tornado. the potential now exists for that tornado, with the warning sirens going, those sirens may not stop for quite some time, anderson. and one of the reasons we picked the location we have, not only is it against a brick building, there s not a lot of debris fields anywhere within sight here. i m told we have gary tuchman on the phone. gary, you re at a shelter. what s happening now that the sirens are going off? reporter: there s more than 400 people, this is the largest shelter in joplin, missouri, and there s a little panic going on right now because police
you have people not in good health. some people who are injured from the initial tornado. we were just getting prepared to do a live report with you when police officials ran into this huge gymnasium, more than 400 people, and started screaming down to the basement, down to the basement, a tornado has been spotted. and just watching these people here, many of them crying, many of them lost everything, and now they ve been hustled down to the basement wondering what the heck is going on in joplin, missouri. it s a very sad time to see the indignities these people are going through, but it s something necessary. what s it like to you lost your home. we seen the pictures, and yet you re out there trying to help other people at the same time. yes. how do you do that? you know, i ve done it for other people, they would do it for me. i ve run into former colleagues in the military that are police officers that are down here. all the guys, the local guys that know me have come up.
i just kept grabbing for the first thing i could find, and that was the faucet. some debris fell on me and kind of held me down. and you ended up for a couple hours staying in the bathtub? i m not sure how long it was. and you saw a friend of yours in the fire department walking down the street? yes. i was peeping my head out there, looking for people. i saw josh anderson from one of the fire departments. i played softball with him and i hollered at him and he kept looking around and found that i was there. and then they got other folks, another detective friend came over trying to get me out. gary tuchman is at a shelter with a couple hundred people who are now in a basement because of the storm. just for people here in joplin, what is what s this been like? you know, everybody is different. i talk to as many people as i can, some people are devastated. some people are trying to figure out what they re going to do next, how they re going to get through it. based on my ex