Gary Earls News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

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...

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 ...

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, edmu...

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...

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 ...