![]() “I was talking to a neighbor in the back. “I feel bad knowing that we still have our house and they lost theirs,” another resident, whose own trailer was intact, commented of his neighbors. They are possessions, but there’s nothing we can do. They don’t know what we’re standing around. “I can’t live here, they’re standing around-they’re homeless. “There’s nobody going to be living here,” a dazed resident told the local media. They covered themselves with a mattress.Ī young woman was killed, dozens were injured, and hundreds lost their homes, according to local police. She had crowded into a bathtub with seven others. “The lights went out and we started praying out loud and screaming and you could hear the roar, the vibration of the tub, the house, the popping, the air sucking out of your ears, then it was gone,” a resident at the Watsons Mobile Home Estates told ABC television affiliate KSWO. Video at WNCT Channel 9 news shows mobile homes being flung into the air. A trailer park was decimated in Chickasha, just south of Oklahoma City. Other reports of survivors taking refuge in bathtubs or closets populate local news coverage. The boy’s younger brother was killed and older sister and mother were seriously injured. According to relatives, the child, his mother and two siblings were forced to take shelter in a bathtub. In Piedmont, a three-year-old child remains missing after his family’s home was torn apart. Low-income communities southwest of Oklahoma City sustained the worst damage. The National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma and other meteorological facilities in the region were forced to evacuate. Statewide, destruction of utility lines left 58,000 residences without power. Rapidly shifting tornadoes along Interstate 40 and US Highway 81 reportedly caught many motorists off guard, flinging vehicles before occupants had time to escape. ![]() In that area, 100 people lost their homes, several businesses were damaged, and a school was struck.Īcross the state, 70 people were injured. Oklahoma City manager Nick Nazar told reporters that the death toll could have been far higher if not for a shelter in the Newcastle community, where 1,200 people found refuge ahead of the storm. Further storms were expected Wednesday night and into Thursday in Missouri, southern Illinois, southern Indiana and Kentucky. Another four were killed in Arkansas, and two more in Kansas. (See “ As more storms move in, death toll rises in Joplin, Missouri”)Īlthough still early in the tornado season, the country has seen major damage from over 1,000 tornadoes in 2011, and at least 505 people have died.įive tornadoes struck suburbs of Oklahoma City Tuesday night, killing at least nine. Many victims were crushed under tons of rubble at a Wal-Mart Supercenter. The city coroner’s office is struggling to identify some of the dead using DNA testing and dental records. The storm obliterated 1,800 acres, or about one-third of the city. Rohr told reporters that 8,000 structures, including individual apartments in large complexes, were completely destroyed. The city of 50,000 suffered catastrophic damage from the tornado, which is now classified as the strongest category EF5. “We are still in a search-and-rescue mode,” Joplin city manager Mark Rohr said at a press conference. Local emergency crews and volunteers were still conducting laborious house-by-house searches through thunderstorms Wednesday. Missouri Governor Jay Dixon had declared that efforts would shift from searching for survivors to recovering the dead by Tuesday afternoon. ![]() City officials, who have not yet issued a revised death toll, report that 124 have died, and hundreds remain unaccounted for. ![]() At Freeman Hospital, where critically injured victims are being treated, workers said 11 people have died. The number of fatalities in Joplin continues to rise. ![]()
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