heights in the community center. it has capacity for 200 folks. we have about 20 there at this point, but we have plenty of capacity. many of these folks are going to neighbors, to family members, and they re also trying to get back into their properties so they can assess their own damages. in terms of cleanup, can you have an idea how much this is going to cost and how long it s going to take? no, i couldn t i d say it s going to be in millions of dollars and not in tens, how s that? i can tell you it s several days before we complete an assessment of the damages and are able to put a number on it. how about the airport, gary? what do you think about that? i was at the airport last night. the airport s main terminal, which is the c concourse, has been just completely destroyed. the roof pulled off of it it, all of the glass blown out, all of the interior utilities, the lights and air-conditioning and that sort of thing, have been
looks like it s in better condition and may be able to open sooner. i m sure that the airport management is trying to figure out a way to share the terminals, share the passenger terminal area so we can get operations out of lambert soon. wow, gary. thank you for a very sobering update. maybe we ll check back in with you. good news thus far, no serious injuries, which absolutely seems like a miracle given this devastation throughout the ground there in st. louis and the surrounding neighborhood. certainly somebody is looking out for us. keep praying for us out there. absolutely. gary earls, best of louck. thank you. a new poll this week demonstrates a troubling trend. a vast majority of americans believe the nation is heading down the wrong track. a staggers 70% think the u.s. is not going in the right direction. just 1 in 4 is satisfied with america s prospects. mark murray, good morning to
emergency management. gary, good morning to you. give me an assessment of what s going on today. is it all cleanup, or do you worry about further storms? we have further storms due in here, but at this point the forecast is for rain only. so we re going to have a lot of wet emergency responders in the st. louis county area. can you tell me what happened, what blew through there yesterday, and the kind of damage that you re seeing? by all accounts we had tornadic activity that came in out of county, skipped across maryland heights and through areas of bridgeton, st. ann, ferguson, edmund son and berkeley and went out the eastern end of st. louis county into st. clair county over in illinois. we talk so often about
they were taken to the hospital for cuts as a result of all the flying glass. i had one emergency management director tell me it looks like lambert airport may be closed for days. you can t clean it it it up in a matter of hours. this is maryland heights, missouri, that s an area about 16, 17 miles or so northwest of downtown st. louis. it s an area that received damage across 16 square miles there. the northern part of the suburb sustained the absolute worst damage, though miraculously thus far no fatalities reported. emergency management director gary earls told us there were alarms sounding three different times in advance of the tornadoes. take a look at cleanup and the mess there. that street has been most particularly hard-hit, about the worst we ve seen. a couple of houses look bare-bone standing and a lot of homes reduced to splinters there
evacuated us off the plane and right into the bathroom in the terminal. reporter: inside the airport the powerful winds ripped the roof on concourse c and shattered the windows in the terminal. the wind came up. we tried to hold the door closed. it was pushing so hard, i said we got to get out of here. we let the door slam open and dove behind the counter as the windows blew out going to our right-hand side. if it wasn t for the counter, we would have got sprayed with glass. can you believe that? had they not found that counter, that would have been pretty brutal in the airport. this is maryland heights, about 17 miles or so northwest of the st. louis airport. that one street, i mean, that was just incredible. these homes have been reduced to splinters for the most part. those people that have damage and have the result of most of their homes still standing have to consider themselves lucky right now. we re joined right now by gary earls on the phone. he s with the st. louis