yeah. they realized that they were trapped. yeah. i imagine, just the water coming in, probably a little bit frightening. but we got we turned around and we went from house to house and people were going, is anybody there? it s like, no, they re out, we re out, you know, we helped them make sure that our neighbors were out. the ones that we knew were home. reporter: one of the remarkable things, when you hear people recount what happened on may 20th, they often talk about may 3rd, may 20th was yesterday. may 3rd the 1999 tornado that came through and took a similar path through moore. rena phillips today us, when she rebuilt after 1999, when they lost everything they add the storm basement, where eight members of the family went down yesterday. they were there looking for two dogs. one of the dogs, titan, found alive, shaking and trembling, dehydrated. titan they found alive.
welcome to our viewers in the united states and around the world. i m chris cuomo in moore, oklahoma. we are tracking the situation here from a devastating tornado that struck this community at 3:00 p.m. yesterday. we ll give you all details and the latest on casualties and the efforts to recover. i m ashleigh banfield, live in phoenix, arizona, a half hour from now jodi arias is expected to stand up and address a jury that s expected to decide whether she lives or dies. this is really the last-ditch effort, her last appearance before this court, determines her fate. i m going to bring you the latest throughout this hour, as well. chris? all right. ashley, thank you very much. we have a two of tiered system here of what s going on. as soon as jodi arias is going on, as ashleigh told you, we ll switch over to that. for now we re here in moore, oklahoma. all around us, this is what
oklahoma, we re monitoring two situations right now. obviously, what happened here, the massive tornado and the aftermath, as this community tries to recover. 20 miles of damage, two miles wide in some parts. people still missing. people lost their lives. many people injured. we re going to talk to one in a moment. also, at bottom of your screen, state steel from arizona, monitoring the death penalty hearing from jodi arias, expected to take the stand. will she ask for death penalty, ask to be scared? we don t know. it s fueling the interest in the case. ashleigh banfield is there. i m in moore, oklahoma. the weather s picked up here. you hear the thunder behind us. it s hampered search and rescue. hail before, bands of rain, thunderstorms coming through. the last thing this community needed especially when so many people have nowhere to get out of the weather. just to give you a sense of we have to hold on to the tent over our head because it s about to blow away.
literally wrapped into the tree. it goes on and on and on. earlier we were 3/4 of a mile here in the plaza towers neighborhood. as residents came back to their home to find things a remarkable story from rina phillips, her neighborhood is flattened, all houses are destroyed. she was in the house when they heard the storm coming. eight members of her family, including a 2-year-old gra grandchild went down to the storm basement. listen how it played out. it was loud, windy. and you know, but once it was over, our cellar started filling up with water on both sides and that s when the grandbabies started panicking. must have been pretty scary. it was scary but we knew we were getting out. we may have been walking in water but we knew we d get out. the people in moore and people that s come in to help, you know, they re family.
school method. message out to people in the - debris and trying to stay with their property and trying to get back into their property so we can get that message to them. we ll be working on that throughout the day, supporting local jurisdiction and making sure they have everything they need. i d like to introduce at this time fire chief moore. hi, i m gary bird, i m fire chief for the city of moore. updated information. we kept over 200 responders in the field last night. we stayed at school overnight going through the school and stayed in several different locations back and forth, changing men out, and we had to pull off several times because of weather, lightning, but we went back out. we are out. we started with primary search yesterday and secondary search. we made it through, i will say, most of the structures, vehicles, homes. ones we didn t make in through