>> oh, we've got lightning. we need to go back. let's turn around. >> oh, it's getting big, big, big. >> that's huge! >> for those who survived, the scars will always be them. nearly two dozen people, including three young men, took cover in a convenience store in a walk-in beer cooler. one turned on his camera as the tornado struck. the video is dark, but the sound tells a story. >> oh! [ wind blowing ] >> oh, my god! >> jesus, jesus! >> imagine pushing open the door after that incredible experience. elsewhere in joplin, one couple recorded the scene in their neighborhood moments after the tornado struck. destruction all around them, homes on fire. they called out for the young man's sister and her fiance. >> sarah! sarah! mike! >> of course, there's no end to the heartbreak, but no end to hope either. we met tracy pressler and her niece, sarah norton. they were looking for sarah's brother, will, who was driving home from his graduation with his dad and was sucked out of the sunroof with the suv as the tornado struck. >> we cry a lot. >> yeah, we cry. >> but we have faith, you know, that they're going to find him alive. you have to have hope and you have to pray. and if they don't, we just pray they find him. >> we're going to have more on will norton's story tonight. and also that of lance heir, a 16-year-old who disappeared in the storm, and his father told he he would drive to every hospital he could. >> until lantze is find dead or alive, i've got to find him. >> reporter: frank wood rushed his family into their storm shelter as a twister struck. >> we got to get in now. come on, bud. it's coming right over us. we're right in its path. >> one beloved member of the wood family, roxy, the dog, didn't make it into the shelter. we'll find out what happened to her, and believe me, you'll want to hear that. all these stories in detail tonight, and witness the courage of people beset by both catastrophe and tragedy. but we start at the beginning. it's 5:40 on sunday evening and a monster rakes across joplin, missouri. >> strong tornado! >> listen to it! >> as the twister roars toward this convenience store -- >> no, they haven't yet. the sirens aren't going. >> frightened customers huddle in terror inside a dark refrigerated storeroom. >> jesus! [ people screaming ] [ wind blowing ] >> jesus, jesus, jesus. heavenly father -- >> everybody okay?! >> you guys all okay? >> yes! >> we're all right! we're all right! >> amazingly, everyone inside survives. >> i've got debris on the ground, right here! debris on the ground! >> the massive tornado, believed to be three quarters of a mile wide with winds exceeding 190 miles an hour rips a path of destruction four miles long, right through the heart of the city. >> oh, my god! >> by monday morning, the devastation was clear. buildings on fire. entire neighborhoods wiped out. st. john's medical center with 183 patients took a direct hit. it was unclear if any of the patients were injured during the storm, but the twister hurled x-rays as far as 70 miles, heaved gurneys for blocks, and smashed the building's glass facade. >> the windows are blown out. there's debris hanging outside of the windows. part of the roof, the whole top is missing. i mean, i'm standing behind the hospital, and cinder blocks, walls, brick walls are just crumbled. >> the tornado also struck joplin high school, just as seniors were finishing graduation ceremonies nearby. parents and students escaped, but the school was demolished. >> i walked around as much as i could to see it, and it just looks like it's just been bombed from the outside in. i mean, it's just -- it's terrible. >> the storm left cars and trucks on top of each other. this walmart, now flattened, this home depot crushed. we don't know how many shoppers were inside the stores when the twister hit. thankfully, residents did have warning the storm was coming. >> by our count, we had 17 minutes' time between we turned the sirens on and we had the first report of a strike. >> 17 minutes, not a lot of time with a monster about to rip through the soul of joplin. the level of destruction was overwhelm withing. not just block after block of rubble, but neighborhood after neighborhood flattened, as far as the eye could see, even from the cockpit of a helicopter. the first job for the first responders was search and rescue. a handful of survivors were pulled from the rubble after the tornado hit, but the level of destruction was so extensive, they were prepared to find bodies. i spent time with missouri task force one, who was searching the home depot. take a look. at joplin's home depot, the search and rescue personnel from missouri task force one have not found anyone alive. they've only found bodies. >> everything that we did yesterday were recoveries, and we completed seven of those. >> reporter: do you think there are more people still inside? >> we have some indication from our k-9 alerts that, yeah, we have some people underneath those slabs. >> reporter: do you think they're still alive? >> i think it's unlikely. >> reporter: doug westhoff is the task force leader. >> we had people coming by, had indication they were in the store, potentially underneath those slabs. one gentleman knew that his son-in-laws and grandkids were in all likelihood in that store and he waited around all day. >> reporter: mortuary teams wait around, but search and rescue personnel still hope to find someone alive. >> the dogs are trained to search for live people who are trapped or entombed in structures exactly like this. >> reporter: this task force has four dogs working in joplin. dr. dora chamberlain's dog is named katie. >> they've got to be naked. if they have a call heart ollar on, they can get trapped. i take all of this off when i send her in. >> many of the fatalities at the home depot have been found near the front of the store. >> if they were huddled near the front, that would have been the most dangerous spot for them? >> unfortunately, yes, because that's where the walls came down. >> reporter: they used heavy equipment to drill through the collapsed walls and check underneath, then they push the walls out of the way. >> this is actually a wall of the home depot. >> sure. >> and that was up, and then it fell. and you guys picked up the whole wall -- >> what you've got is a piece of concrete, you can see the inhalatii insulation foam in between and another layer of concrete on top of that. >> this is all insulation? >> absolutely. >> this was a much more survivable environment here than it would have been to have been at the front of the store where those huge concrete walls came down on folks. >> have you already been through this area? >> yeah, even with the front of the store being inaccessible, we were able to probe in from different places. >> with so much heavy equipment needed, the search is sometimes frustratingly slow. how much are you working against the clock here in terms of the bad weather coming later today? >> we're working against the clock all the time, both for the survivability profile, and the forecast for the bad weather. so, yeah, we're always under the gun for that. we had to shelter our folks a few times yesterday, just based on the lightning strikes and the hail and rain and that sort of stuff, just makes it impossible to move around and do it safely. >> reporter: time is running out, and there's still so much to do. doug westhoff is trying to be optimistic. >> if the space is right, if the void is big enough, these people -- people can last many days like this. so we're two to three days into this thing and we're sort of the eternal optimists out here, anderson. we're going to maintain hope as long as we can. the reality is always creeping in the back of your brain, that this is becoming less and less likely a rescue and more and more likely recovery, but that's the reality of the world we live in. >> reporter: by the end of the day, they find one trapped person, but sadly, that person had already died. the searching continues, however, even here in joplin, amidst all this misery, even here, there is still some hope. well, yeah, there is still hope in joplin. up next, inside the search for the missing. two teenagers vanish when the tornado hit. their families desperate for answers. we'll bring you their stories ahead. and ahead, a family scrambling for shelter as the tornado gets close, but where is the family dog? >> that's once in a lifetime! you'll probably never see this again. and it's moving fast. >> holy -- >> it's huge. >> they got into a shelter, the dog didn't. you'll want to see how this story ends, coming up. ♪ i thought it was over here... ♪ [car horn honks] our outback always gets us there... ... sometimes it just takes us a little longer to get back. ♪ i'm gary tuchman. more of anderson cooper's special report, "deadly impact," in just a moment. but first, a "360" news bulletin. officials in joplin, missouri, say the list of people missing after last week's devastating tornado is down to 29. the death toll is 142, making it the deadliest u.s. tornado since modern recordkeeping began back in 1950. after visiting joplin yesterday, president obama was at arlington national cemetery this memorial day, laying a wreath at the tomb of the unknowns. the president also visited a section of the cemetery for soldiers killed in iraq and afghanistan. italian officials say eight generals from moammar gadhafi's army have defected. and robert zuma met with gadhafi, pressing for a cease-fire and peace talks in libya. and sarah palin has started a nationwide bus tour. palin says it's not a campaign bus and she's still contemplating whether she's run for president. today, her memorial day stops included washington, mt. vernon, virginia, and gettysburg, pennsylvania. join "a.c. 360" tonight at 10:00 eastern live from gettysburg. now, back to "deadly impact." this is bad. oh, my gosh. this is awful. this is -- look at that! that is destroyed. completely. >> so many families in joplin are still searching for loved ones and refuse to give up hope. will norton is one young man who went missing in the tornado. he disappeared while driving home with his dad from his high school graduation. his dad, mark, survived. he's seriously injured, though. the powerful winds of the twister pulled will right up through the sunroof of his suv, according to his dad. his family heard reports that a young man matching will's description was taken to a local hospital and then moved to another hospital. well, will's sister tracked down that hospital and visited the young man, but sadly, it wasn't her brother. >> i'm so sorry, sarah. >> it'll be okay. we've got a lot of people looking, sweetie. a lot of people love him. >> for will norton's aunt tracy and his sister, sarah, the wait, at times is too much to bear. will was driving home from his high school graduation with his father, mark, when the tornado struck. >> mark thought if they could pull into the subdivision, they could maybe find a place to go, and they only got as far as that median when the tornado literally picked him up and they got wrapped up in this stuff and it was a big mess. i don't even know where that came from. >> what has he told you about what happened when the tornado hit? >> he says that he remembers flipping and being airborne and just -- it just kept going. >> reporter: will was in the driver's seat, his father tried to grab him. >> my brother grabbed him from across the seat to hold on to him. he remembers my nephew just started reciting scripture, one verse after another, which, you know, my brother was a little shocked, but will did it all the way up until when he went out the window. >> what window did he go out of? >> the sunroof. he went up. >> so he was literally sucked out of the -- >> he literally was pulled through the window, while my brother held him. and he was ripped out of his arms. >> reporter: mark was found in this ditch, badly injured, but alive. there's been no sign of will. >> we've called h hundreds and hundreds of hospitals and right now we kind of just think that he's still out here somewhere, waiting to be found. >> reporter: will's family is urging people to search not just in joplin, but in areas even farther away. >> he could be anywhere between here and springfield, missouri. we're not talking half a mile or a mile, i mean, we're talking miles. that storm could have taken him miles. >> reporter: canine team have said called, some trained to find the living, others to find the ted. >> i think sarah's mom, i think she's having probably the toughest time, as any mama would have. you know, you don't want to think that your kids are gone, it's really tough. >> yeah. >> so, we just ask for prayers from everybody. absolutely everybody, and people that are following it on facebook, we really love you, and just pray. pray for everybody. that's what we want. it'll be okay. it's going to be okay. we'll find him, baby, we'll find him. >> reporter: steve lee, a retired battalion chief with the joplin fire department, is working around the clock to find will. so they've searched the water now a couple times and haven't found anything? >> they've searched it, they're on their second search, just to confirm it, and that's where we're at there. >> reporter: you're carrying a picture of will? >> yes, i have a picture of will here, in case i ever come up to somebody, i can actually just show them who we're looking for. >> we have faith, you know, that they're going to find him alive. you have to have hope and you have to pray. and if they don't, we just pray they find him. we're a strong family and we're going to be together and we're going to find him. someone's going to find him. a lot of people are looking. and there's a lot of families that are suffering and we hope they find their loved ones too, alive. >> although the unidentified young man in the hospital turned out not to be will norton, word about him spread and gave some hope to other families that their lost teenage boy might be alive. the anguished family of 16-year-old lantz hare was one of them. his mom says lantz was ripped out of a car. i had a chance to speak with lantz's dad in joplin. he vowed to search until he found his son alive or not. what is the last you know about lantz? >> my youngest son called me, and it was maybe ten minutes after the storm, and they -- him and my ex-wife had been trying to get ahold of him over and over, and they couldn't, and they called me, so i started calling him. and still never got anything. i mean, i called it all last night. i called -- >> you've still been calling his number? >> well, i can't stop. i don't know why. i do. i stayed up until 2:00 last night and that's all i did. >> called his cell phone? does it ring or -- >> it rang for the first day and a half and now it goes straight to voice mail, but just in case he gets it, i want him to know that his dad loves him. >> how are you holding up? >> i got a lot of strong people around me that pick me up. that's about it. i mean, in something as catastrophic as all this, you don't know whether he's underneath a piece of wood or whether he's in a hospital or where he's at. and we've searched and searched and searched. so i've got to keep searching. >> so you're going to go to springfield now and hope for the best? >> i'm walking away from here and going to springfield, missouri, and then i'm going to kansas city, and then i'm going to witchta, and i'll go somewhere else if i have to. >> you'll check all the hospitals, anything you can? >> well, any that we've had reports that there's a kid that looks like lantz, i can't just sit here and -- the hospitals tell us that it may or may not or it may be him or -- you know? some of the reports are the bruising is so bad that they really can't tell. well, i can tell you whether it's my son. i can tell. and i will tell. >> and you were asked to give dna? >> i was asked to give dna today at missouri southern, a little while ago, and that right there just said it in me that there can't be no stopping, unless lantz's found dead or alive, i've got to keep pushing. i've got to find him. >> it's important to hold on to hope? >> oh, my god, yeah. if you don't have hope, what are you going to do? look at all this. if every family out here didn't have hope that it's going to be better, i've heard on the radio they're going to rebuild st. john's. that's hope. you've got to have hope. you've got to have god, you've got to have friends and family, you've got to have all of it combined to get you through this. >> well, thanks for talking to us. i appreciate it. >> thank you. >> stay strong. >> sadly, after i spoke to mike hare that day, we learned that his son, lantz, did not survive the tornado. up next, a brother desperate to find his sister, minutes after the tornado hit. >> sarah! mike! sarah! mike! >> sarah! mike! mike! sarah! >> the frantic search, destruction everywhere they looked. see what happened to them, coming up. plus, we'll talk with the people who went through this. they rode out the tornado almost in complete darkness inside a walk-in beer cooler at a convenience store. ber, producing products that save on fuel and emissions like ecopia tires... even making parts for solar panels that harness the sun's energy... working on social activities like clean up programs on beaches in many locations... and regional replanting activities that will help make a better world for all of us. ♪ one team. one planet bridgestone. and today, we're re-inventing aspirin for pain relief. with new extra-strength bayer advanced aspirin. it has microparticles so it enters the bloodstream faster and rushes relief right to the site of your tough pain. ♪ in fact, it's clinically proven to relieve pain twice as fast. new bayer advanced aspirin. extra strength pain relief, twice as fast. should i bundle all my policies with nationwide insurance ? 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[ wind blowing ] [ people screaming ] >> hold on! >> everybody, hang on! >> oh, my god! >> jesus, jesus! jesus! >> i spoke to isaac duncan and his two friends, brendan and cory, about their incredible experience. you actually shot the video on your iphone. >> yeah. >> so tell me what -- you go to the back of the store and you know the storm's coming, you guys have pulled over this convenience store and the front doo