Page 7 - Killer Tornado News Today

>> go! >> oh, dear heaven. >> god! >> reporter: at the same time a security camera in a nearby frozen yogurt shop catches the chaos. workers moving customers to the back and then -- everything goes flying. the massive tornado mowing down everything in its path. peoples lives churned up and spewed out. >> heres the gas station that we were at. >> reporter: this is the convenience store now. >> this would have been where we walked in. >> reporter: all across the city, thousands and thous...

that is a monster tornado. >> reporter: battle hardened storm chasers in awe of natures power. >> oh, my gosh. this is awful. dude, the trees are debarked. >> reporter: residents running for every anywhere they could. >> everybody get down, all on the ground. >> reporter: in a crowded convenience store, some 20 people hunkering down in a darkened commercial refrigerator. >> can we go in the cooler? [ screaming ] >> go! >> oh, dear heaven. >> god! >> reporter: at the same time a securit...

Definitely in a tornado. >> aaron, how did you finally find sarah? >> after we didnt find them at the house, we didnt know what to do. but people pointed us to the walgreens a few blocks away saying thats where they had a triage center set up. they werent there, so we started walking down main street, or what was left of main street, trying to get a cell phone signal. asking people if they had seen them, yelling out their names. and finally we happened to walk into cell coverage and her fiance, ...

>> but paisley cant stop thinking about her dog. >> that was probably the most upsetting thing was roxie. >> reporter: then a phone call almost two miles away, david franco, an oil rig worker, sees a dog walking around his work site. >> i knew she belonged to somebody. >> reporter: paisley and her family race to see if its true, that their dog had somehow managed to escape the tornados grip. then the moment they had been hoping for. >> shes coming right now. >> roxie! >> reporter: it is roxie. >...

Outside, which freaked everybody out. >> you were worried a fire might break out? >> yeah. towards the end of it, you could smell smoke outside, so we figured it was time to get away from the building. >> how long did it last for, cory? >> three or four minutes, you know, of bad, bad hail and debris. like that second part where it hits is just so -- the sound, the force of it is so loud. >> what goes through your mind when youre experiencing something like that? >> honestly, it was very surreal....

Of 8,000 structures were damaged or destroyed. nearly two dozen people, including three young men, took cover at a convenience store. the video is dark, but the audio, the sounds tell a story. >> oh, my god! [ screaming ] >> imagine pushing open the door after that incredible experience. elsewhere in joplin, one couple recorded the scene moments after the tornado struck. destruction all around them, homes on fire. they called out for the young mans sister and fiance. >> sarah!

The searching continues, however, even here in joplin, amidst all this misery. even here there is still some hope. there is still hope in joplin. up next, inside the search for the missing. two teenagers vanished. the families desperate for answers. later, caught on tape. a family scrambling for shelter as the tornado gets close. but where is the family dog? >> thats once-in-a-lifetime. youll probably never see this again. and its moving fast. its huge. >> they got into the shelter. the dog di...

Your head when you grabbed the camera and first ran outside, had you ever been through anything like this before? >> nothing like this. im not sure anybody has with what theyre saying about this kind of tornado. when we left the house, we had no idea it was like this, though. i took the camera thinking there would be some downed trees and stuff like that. but you realized the severity of everything, and i already had the camera running. every block you went in deeper, the worse and worse it got ...

>> until hes find, dead or alive, ive got to find him. >> parts of oklahoma were struck by tornadoes, as well. frank wood rushed his family into the storm shelter as the twister struck. >> weve got to go now! its coming right over us. were right in its path. >> one beloved member of the wood family, roxie the dog, didnt make it into the shelter. all these stories and details tonight and witness the courage of people beset by catastrophe and tragedy. but we start at the beginning. its 5:40 on sun...

That hit oklahoma. this is the deadliest tornado season since 1953. states from ohio to texas have been on guard. and when joplin was struck, there have been dozens of other tornadoes across the midwest causing death and destruction. take a look. >> oh, my god! back up. oh, no! stop. oh, no. >> in this part of the country where things were bad, they have quickly gotten worse. >> extremely large and dangerous tornado. >> very large tornado. >> at least 16 people were killed in storms that struck ...