many ran to seek safer ground, but boy, the devastation is coming to light today. >> that's right. 12 hours later life has changed in joplin, missouri. a powerful tornado ripped that city apart. the red cross said 75% of the town is virtually gone with reports of at least 30 people killed and dozens more injured. 50,000 people live in the city. no phone service, power lines are down, cars and trucks smashed and flipped. the governor calling out the national guard and declaring a state of emergency this morning. >> to make matters worse the city's main hospital st. john's medical center where people would have gone to get help suffered extensive damage. witnesses say windows were blown out on some of the top floors. medical records, x-rays and other items scattered nearly 70 miles away. at least 100 patients hadden to transferred to other area hospitals. crews combing through mounds of debris and rubble searching for survivors. brian todd is live at joplin at st. john's. when we say searching for survivors, do they have any estimation of how many people could be missing in the wake of this tornado? >> no estimates yet, kiran. combing through this area right here. you've got the st. john's medical center behind me. i'm going to show you a little bit of the damage. our photo journalist is going to kind of hone in there as tightly as he can. the building as you can see, the facade has been ripped apart. of the part of the top of the building has been taken away. we saw doctors go in there to try to retrieve medical records and other things. we're told most of the people, if not all of the people have evacuated. we're going to go over here to give you a sense of some of the other devastation here and around the town. we got here a short time ago. a scene of utter devastation. everything seems to be wiped out. look at the cars over here. you have a van and suv on top of a pick-up truck over here. the cars are twisted. some have been burned. you can see there's wreckage of cars all over the place. this is a scene repeated throughout the city. just homes have been reduced to virtually nothing almost as far as the eye can see. you mentioned a red cross official did say about 75% of the town is gone. governor jay nixon not giving specific casualty figures yet. a lot he says will not be determined until daylight arrives about an hour from now. they've been trying to work to pull people out of wreckage to see if anybody is still trapped. that's unclear. there are emergency crews combing this entire area looking for people who might be trapped. i'm going to bring in someone who can tell us more, miranda lewis, a spokeswoman for the st. john's medical center. thanks for coming by. tell us first of all what can you tell us about the people in there, how many were in there and how many have you gotten out? >> we had roughly 180 patients and everybody has been evacuated from the hospital so that's all good news. we had a couple hundred co-workers as well. >> there were reports of fires in there. when you arrived there was some natural gas leaks and it was dangerous. what happened there? >> i personally did not see any fires. they were trying to get people away from the hospital. there were natural gas fires here as well as all around this area. so they were working very hard to get that contained and then to get people to safety. >> there's a triage center over there we know. >> right. >> are patients being taken to other medical centers? is there enough capability to handle the volume from this hospital? >> luckily the town has all pulled together. we've got ems crews and hospital workers from all around. right after the tornado hit, we sent our critical patients across the street to freeman health system and, you know, they were great in taking care of our critical patients. we sent the ambulatory walking wounded to a community center in the middle of joplin and then there was some spillover into actually a catholic high school at that point. so now we're trying to get them all back contained into the community center. >> you're one of the first witnesses we've had a chance to talk to. tell us what it was like when this thing hit, how much warning did you have? what was it like? >> this is on the west end of joplin. i live on the east end. we did hear the sirens go off. from what i've heard there was little warning here. the sirens did go off, so they did have some. a tornado this big, it's difficult to prepare for something of this magnitude. >> thank you for giving us the information, best of luck to you and your crew as you try to recover from this. thank you very much. >> thank you. >> what we're told is there's going to be a news conference maybe in about a half hour to get a read on the numbers we're talking about. daylight not for another hour and they're still combing through what is a completely devastated city. it's hard to give you a real picture. when daylight comes we will be able to shoot better pictures and a sense of the devastation here. it is -- it looks to be a town almost completely wiped out at this point. >> at least the good news for that hospital they did get all of the patients out and into different facilities. thanks so much, brian. search and rescue efforts as brian alluded to are under way still and they should know more at sun up. there is so much destruction it's impossible to know how many people may be trapped beneath the debris. >> we're joined by keith, emergency management director for the city of joplin and jasper county. welcome to the program. first off, still dark there, you do know there are places where you know people are trapped. as soon as light comes up and you can plow through the roads that will be the first order of business i assume? >> that is correct. as a matter of fact, we still have a list. we have been working all night long and we will continue to do so you until we get to everybody. >> we are just getting a sense of the scope of this, hearing perhaps 2,000 buildings damage ord destroyed in some sway. people are saying 75% of the city is gone? >> well, that's probably a very high number, but the particular area that the tornado went through is just like the central portion of the city and it's very dense in terms of population. that 2,000 structures is not a surprise to us at all. >> six-mile long path, this storm carved out. tell us a little bit about what you're seeing in the dark on the ground from your vantage point? >> it's very difficult in the dark, but it seems like everywhere you go there's destruction, buildings are down, trees down, homes are down, businesses have been crushed. canopies have been thrown to the side. rvs have been tossed into another house. roofs have been taken off. it's quite amazing. >> how are you guys coordinating any type of, first of all, the search and rescue, but second of all being able to do the disaster cleanup given phone service as i understand it was largely cut off for the city and just the sheer challenge of trying to move around? >> it's been a little crazy. fortunately we do have a good emergency management system here. we have a lot of good people we worked with. when the phone systems went down we were able to switch over to alternate communications by radio. a lot of good people in the area that have worked with us in years past and we've worked with them and we've been able to get them in here. we have over 40 agencies that have responded from kansas, oklahoma, arkansas and missouri with about 410 personnel in those 40 agencies. >> can you tell us about the injuries, the scope of the injuries at this point, and where you're sending people? we know your hospital took a direct hit. >> yes. the main hospital, st. john's did. we have freeman hospital across the way. we don't have a definitive count yet as far as fatalities we're working on that number and hope to have something later for the news conference. freeman hospital has reported they treated over 400 people just for injuries. >> wow. 400 people for injuries and as we understand that's right next -- across the street at least. >> they're across the street south of me. >> the american red cross spokesperson said 75% of the town is gone. you say that's a high estimate. if you had to sort of just taking a look at what you've seen what do you think in terms of how much damage for the town of joplin. >> between 10 and 20. >> so that's much lower than -- >> yes. >> they're estimating. also the other question is about how much warning. it's interesting to hear some witnesses say they felt they had warning on one side of town, whereas on the area where -- around st. john's there are some questions about whether they had enough time to do much, apparently just trying to wheel some patients into the hallways and hope for the best? >> well, obviously those situations are very confused but i can tell you i was the one that had them turn on the sirens. by our count we had 17 minutes time between when we turned the sirens on and report the strike. >> 17 minutes to prepare. this is a part of the country it's not as if you're not used to tornado. people know to take shelter, get in the basement, out of harm's way. was it the classic tornado where you would hear the sfloor tell me what you were hearing? >> yeah. it was -- >> sounds like we've lost keith. >> we're still here. we're still here. >> it was -- you could hear it. this was a monster store. >> classic type things reports you have. the train coming by and people figuring out -- people thought it was a major gas release, any types of expressions of what it sounds like when they come through. >> emergency management for the city of joplin. best of luck as you continue to get on the grown and do your search and rescue and looking frds to hearing more from your news conference later on in the morning. the twin cities took a direct lit from a powerful twister on sunday. northern minneapolis feeling the brunt of it. one person was killed there. 22 others were hurt. entire blocks of homes destroyed there in the twin cities. >> ambulances lightnining up to victims away. thousands without power. the mayor warning everyone to stay out of the area so emergency crews can do their jobs. as we've said this has proven to be difficult. rob joins us on set. you know, we've seen a swarm of an awful lot of destructive weather including records set for tornados. >> now with today, regardless of what the fatality count is, we're he going to be -- we'll have broken the record, set back in 1974, surpassed that year i should say, and this will be the deadliest tornado season since the 1950s. really tremendous amount of destruction and nature not done yet. through the middle of may, mentioned that minneapolis had a tornado with fatality, numerous injuries there. also destructive and deadly tornado rolling across kansas on saturday. want to show you what the radar looks like when this tornado rolled through joplin yesterday and this tornado, this radar imagery from 3:00 in the afternoon to 9:00 at night. you see that super cell blow up to the north and west of joplin and drive down to the south and east. this is a little different look than the one that rolled through tuscaloosa and alabama. that was a more distinct super cell on the ground and rotating for 200, 300 miles. this one just blowing up in the southeast corner of kansas and making its way across joplin, missouri. we mentioned the lead time as far as the warning goes. over 22 minutes of lead time from the time the national weather service issued that warning from when it struck. so this could have been a lot worse for sure let's look at the storm reports for the day. we had 48 reports of tornadoes stretching from as far north as minnesota to as far south as parts of oklahoma and the one that rolled through joplin, missouri. devastating day with over 700 reports of severe weather yesterday. the threat for today, not quite as bad but it's a little more widespread from oklahoma all the way to d.c., a slight risk of seeing some thunderstorms that could produce severe weather. i think tomorrow will be a bigger day as far as a bull's eye in the more typical spots that does include southwestern missouri again. as far as the current radar, just give you an idea where the most intense storms are from nashville, lexington, louisville, across the ohio river valley before too long. not a whole lot of tremendous weather with this. it's kind of weakened somewhat since the initial line that it rolled through last night, but there's going to be rough and tumble thunderstorms through the appalachians in the next couple hours. unbelievable weekend. may started off quiet. i know it felt like we had a rough couple weeks, but from the time that the tuscaloosa, alabama, outbreak happened, to now, it's really been a relatively quiet couple of weeks. boom, here we go again. >> all you hope is for spring serenity after everything that's happened and hasn't happened yet. >> couple weeks. >> thanks, rob. also new, all hands on deck effort in louisiana to keep the mississippi river at bay. more than 2,000 inmates at the louisiana state penitentiary have been put to work, filling sandbags and patching levee holes. floods destroyed part of the pen ten areary. the region is surg suffering from the worst floods to hit. a volcano erupts in iceland shutting down the airports. so far flights across europe have not been disrupted but they are keeping their eye on this. airlines were told yesterday to be prepared for cancellations. the cloud is expected to hit scotland tomorrow and it could reach france and spain by thursday. after an all-out manhunt los angeles police now have a suspect in custody in connection with the brutal attack of a giants fan on opening day. police say 31-year-old giovanni ramirez was the primary aggressor in a vicious beating that left the victim, bryan stow, in a coma. ramirez is charged with assault with a deadly weapon and being held on $1 million bail. stow, a father of two, remains in critical condition. talk about guts, 22-year-old swiss race driver simone, de sylvester wrecked her car sunday. she suffered second degree burns to her hand and said she didn't know if she wanted to get back into the race car this weekend to qualify for next week's indy 500 but she did and yes, she did qualify. there's a look at the wreck right there. this is what happened to last year's indy 500 winner. dario franchitti, was cruising in saturday's qualifying run when he ran out of gas. instead of challenging for the pole position in next week's race, he'll have to settle for the ninth position back in the third row. run out of gas? >> ride that margin so closely and then boom. >> at 8:40 we'll be joined by three special guests in our new york studio, danica patrick, defending champ dario franchitti and 2009 winner and former "dancing with the stars" champ and buds with me and christine. >> that's right. >> helio castroneves. >> great time when he was here last time. >> check out don king. that's him at fenway park this weekend watching his beloved red sox from above the green monster in left field when he happened to catch david ortiz's 300th career home run. >> what are the chances? >> john sent -- can you believe it? john sent the ball down to big pappy and the slugger sent him this cool autographed bat in return. john king, makes news, and he makes news. >> crazy. >> how funny he happened to be -- it was -- he was pretty far up there. >> probably humming in there pretty good. i'm going to get the play by play. see his hands, if they're bruised up at all. >> congratulations john king. congratulations david ortiz on your 300th home run. president obama in ireland tracing his irish roots. a live report from dublin ahead. >> who can forget this. princess beatrice's hat sells at auction. how much it went for and what she's doing with the money. color 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