Page 36 - Ef 4 News Today

Ground for nearly 40 minutes. it was a mile wide and traveled some 20 miles with winds of up to 200 miles per hour. early reports from the national weather service label it an ef-4. thats the second most powerful type of tornado. it flattened entire neighborhoods and dealt a direct blow to the plaza towers elementary school in the city of moore. this morning at least 51 people are confirmed dead, 20 of them are children. more than 120 are being treated at local hospitals and officials expect tho...

We begin this special edition of "world news now" with new details on that destructive tornado which hit the oklahoma city suburb of moore. at least 51 are confirmed dead with the medical examiner expecting even more bodies. almost half of those who died are children. >> there are fears the toll will rise as crews search for the missing. hospitals also busy treating more than 100 people. we begin our coverage with abcs ginger zee. >> reporter: at 2:40 p.m. local time the first tornado warning we...

Basements because of bedrock. its just cost prohibitive to put in a basement across much of the oklahoma city metro area. ground zero of tornado alley and most people dont have basements. and if its an ef-4 or an ef-5, your odds of survival unless you can get into a basement is something less than 50/50. the local radio stations did something very unusual, but i think they saved a lot of lives. they said look, if you dont have a basement, you may not survive this tornado. if you have a vehicle, ...

>> yeah. >> its pretty amazing. and also, the national weather service is going to be out here. weve been talking about this storm at least an ef-4. theyre going to try to figure out categorically if it could be an ef-5 because of the severity of the wind. >> well the width and the devastation and the track, the 20-mile track this left behind. and i think most people in the midwest will know and recognize, you know, as weve been talking about this residential neighborhood. its a perfect grid sys...

South florida and wiped away a whole community. looks like joplin, some of the worst scenes ive seen in my weather career. as far as what were dealing with. this is what you need to know, theres no blamed to be assigned here. we had a tornado watch two hours and ten minutes before it actually hit moore, oklahoma. the tornado warning was up for 25 to 40 minutes before, average lead time for a tornado hitting an area, about 12 minutes. they had plenty of lead time, happened at 3:00 or 4:00 in the ...

Muddy field. they found him alive. hes in the hospital, shes okay, but just one of the many harrowing stories out here. as this massive tornado came through here. all you see are foundations. we have had thunderstorms. now the rain is over with, and we expect things to clear up now. the sun will be out later on this afternoon through tonight. so just piles of debris, and back there is where that 7-eleven store was. if you came ornd the corner, didnt live here, werent from moore, you wouldnt know...

Which youve been describing, it is unthinkable. it is like a movie set. i talked to a family yesterday that came out of their storm shelter. they were -- this storm shelter is in their house, in their house, the house goes, theyre in the storm shelter, theyre feeling the top of the shelter actually being pulled. they feel like theyre going to get sucked out. so even the wind and debris got inside the shelter and almost pulled this group out. so just, these kind of amazing stories to just give yo...

Go through the debris. debris we are also seeing right now reports that debris from oklahoma city from moore has little pieces of it actually have been raining down on tulsa, oklahoma. ch is about 100 miles away. two schools were in the direct path of the tornado. the national weather service classified it as an ef-4. what that means in terms of speeds is it could have been up to 200 miles an hour. as we have reported, they received an 8 to 12 minute warning. as can you understand, thats why the...

Didnt get a response from him, and they ran to another area and i was pretty overwhelmed. thats the time a guy walked away when they couldnt hear anything from him. >> david massey, thank you very much for sharing these emotional stories and video with our viewers. good luck to you, good luck to everybody in oklahoma. were just getting word, by the way, the oklahoma department of emergency management confirming that the national guard in oklahoma has been activated in response to these tornados....

Range. definitely complete blocks are missing. large buildings being completely leveled out there. unfortunately this definitely looks like that ef-4 where weve seen the damage out there really looking anywhere from that 160 and 200 mile per hour range. there is something as we go into the late evening hours, were not in the clearment we have severe weather out there with us. well have to be monitoring some of the new cells that are developing as we still go through some of the rescue efforts ov...