Page 8 - Damage Path News Today

Hes the mayor of chicaasha. how are you doing? >> we are about 30 hours into our recovery stage. and i toured the damage path this morning. this is a very tight knit community and people are helping each other. but i think we are making progress. shannon: you hear people talking about how neighbors are flooding in to help. there is a real sense of people helping each other pick up the pieces. >> thats what oklahoma is all what. immediately the churches opened their doors. relief shelters for who...

178th, mike, going east like north, east of four corners and i see it, but it is wrapped in rain. i cant get close enough to it t is wrapped in rain right now as it is now moving into southwest logan county. but you can see it i can see the left side and the right side t is still a violent tornado, mike no doubt about it but im not like 100 yards like earlier. im back a couple of miles or so but you canning definitely see where it is. i havent crossed a damage path because i have been on the sou...

Along range line road, highways 37 and 96 were demolished. st. johns hospital, of course, took a direct hit a long with walgreens, a home depot, several other locations. tell us about this area. what does it look like if youre driving through there? >> really -- you know, when you come up onto it and different points -- parts of it, its unrecognizable. there are different parts of town that have taken less -- you know, had less of an impact of the damage path. like i say, we pulled into what was...

Were unable to see that. it was shrouded in rain and the hail core. it was maybe a mile to two miles ahead of us from our software we were using. >> i know its difficult to see in terms of how widespread the damage is, but what are you hearing in terms of how much of the town is devastated or how many miles this thing may have traveled? at least from what im hearing anywhere from three to five miles long damage path. nearer the hospital, complete devastation. theres several homes that were there...

>> okay. hey, steve, will you just hold on real quickly? ? we appreciate you helping us out here. i want to bring in ray foreman, a meteorologist at kode in joplin, missouri. again, a meteorologist there. hey, ray, thanks for joining us. don lemon here, jacqui jeras our other meteorologist a long with chad myers. bring us up to date on the situation where you are. >> well, this was actually a devastating tornado. it seemed as though most of the path, the damage path, goes right through the heart...

What are you seeing? >> yes, we can actually get some video on our tower cam. we can actually see the damage path. it appears to be anywhere from a half to three-quarters of a mile wide at times. and it went from one end of the city to the other end of the city. it was in a populated area in high traffic time on range line. unfortunately, we have fatalities in the joplin and jasper county area. >> we know this was an f-3 or greater category. the damage youve seen, can you describe it? >> yes. we...

meteorologist jacqui jeras. we have been monitoring these feeds. you have been monitoring scanner traffic. were told a number of injuries, possibility casualties. people are looking for people. whats going on? >> so much devastation. its hard to get a handle on how widespread this is. of course, communication is extremely limited. theyre asking people to stay out of the city because emergency crews are trying to set up triages to help the people who have been injured. and also, you kno...

Warning of possible layoffs soon. the dispute over the state budget has sparked weeks of protests. were told filmmaker michael moore joined todays march. more than a dozen senate democrats have fled the state to prevent a budget vote. a major storm system in the southeast has brought reports of a tornado outside of baton rouge and downpours on the mardi gras celebrations causing some of them to have to be postponed, moved. jacqui jeras is joining us from the severe weather center to tell us ab...

The rapid upward motion on the back side. we knew it was going to be a bad situation in mississippi that day. >> when you hear stories of survival, there was one little girl who held onto a tree and felt herself whirling around. she managed to survive. there were other stories. we know there were several people who did lose their lives. are you amazed there were not more people who died in this storm when you look at just the damage and what you saw live? >> yeah. we called the tornado in, repor...

Lot of warning. they are woken out of bed and these are some of the pictures were getting. this is a small town in jackson county, extreme northeastern alabama, a little small community town. this is like the main plaza and shopping area, completely destroyed. we heard about a baptist church there completely destroyed. this is a separate picture from cole bert county and this is what remains of a house. you see a house that looks like this, these werent weak tornados. some of these tornados appe...