Rescue workers continued to search for survivors amid scenes of devastation on Tuesday after a suburb of Oklahoma City was hit by one of the most powerful tornadoes in modern US history.
Hundreds of US National Guard, police and medical staff combed through piles of rubble in the streets of Moore, south of the city, a landscape that had been transformed in a matter of minutes from leafy suburbia to an apocalyptic scene.
The tornado lasted about an hour on Monday, when it tore through farmland outside Oklahoma City, crossed a river and then headed into Moore. It destroyed hundreds of homes and shops, wiped out two schools and a hospital and left more than 240 people injured, including at least 60 children.
Authorities in Moore put the number of deaths at 24, revising down an earlier figure of 51. Local officials blamed the higher figure on double-counting in the confusion of the tornado strike. But they also warned that the new figure could climb again as more bodies were found. “We have got good news. The number right now is 24. There was a lot of chaos,” said Amy Elliott, the chief administrative officer for the local medical examiner.
Rescue workers had spent Monday night searching for survivors in Moore and elsewhere along the tornado’s track. They deployed thermal imaging equipment to try and detect body heat beneath the rubble and also asked media crews to leave the area so rescuers could better listen to any cries for help.
Using flashlights and teams of sniffer dogs, they braved conditions made hazardous by leaking gas mains, fires and the threat of further storms. But local authorities said more than 100 people had been pulled alive from the ruins after the tornado struck.
Television footage showed block after block of flattened homes, and trees splintered into match sticks. Video emerged showing screaming and bloodied children carried by teachers and parents from the wreckage of their school.
On Tuesday, President Obama called the disaster “one of the most destructive tornadoes in history” and promised the full help of the government in both rescue and rebuilding. “There are empty spaces where there used to be living rooms and bedrooms and classrooms. And in time we’re going to need to refill those spaces with love and laughter and community,” he said.
Obama summed up the horror of the moment for many Americans by talking about the direct strikes on Moore’s schools. “In an instant, many homes were destroyed, dozens of people lost their lives … and among them were children trying to take shelter in the safest place they knew, their school,” Obama said.
The tornado touched down at 2.56pm, just 16 minutes after the first warning went out, and traveled for 20 miles. The National Weather Service said the tornado was at least a half-mile wide and was an EF-4 on the enhanced Fujita scale, the second most-powerful type of tornado. It loosely followed the path of a previous storm that hit the same region in May 1999 with winds of up to 300 mph.
The Moore storm was the deadliest US tornado since 161 people were killed in Joplin, Missouri, two years ago.
Stories of survival began to emerge on Monday. At the hospital in Moore, some doctors had jumped in a freezer to survive the storm. Elsewhere local farmer Lando Hite described how the storm had struck a horse farm carrying the animals up into the sky. “It was just like the movie Twister,” Hite told TV station KFOR. “There were horses and stuff flying around everywhere.”
Outside the regional hospital in nearby Norman, Oklahoma, Ninia Lay, 48, told Reuters she huddled in a closet as the tornado hit. Her house was flattened and Lay was buried in the rubble for two hours until her husband and rescuers dug her out. “I thank God for my cell phone. I called me husband for help,” she said. At the Agapeland daycare facility, 15 children survived after being herded into two bathrooms. Even though the roof was ripped off one of the rooms as the tornado passed, staff kept the youngsters calm by having them sing: “You are my sunshine.” All survived.
But there were scenes of tragedy. At local churches, families anxiously awaited news of loved ones as authorities scrambled to work out who was dead, missing or alive. At one church, St Andrews United Methodist Church, the names of surviving children were called out via megaphone in front of a crowd of terrified parents.
Much of the attention was focused on the ruins of Plaza elementary school, which had been flattened by the storm. Workers formed lines to remove rubble from the twisted heap which had had its roof torn off and its walls pushed down by the sheer force of the winds. A few children were found alive in the rubble overnight and were passed down a line of rescue workers to waiting ambulances. But as the search wore on, it became less likely that anyone would be pulled out alive. “They’re looking for life, but they have not had any hits recently, so they’re in recovery mode now,” Oklahoma governor Mary Fallin said late Monday night.
The weather system that spawned the tornado, and several other twisters the day before, had still not run out of steam by Tuesday. South-west Arkansas and north-east Texas, including Dallas, were still under the threat of severe weather warnings, raising the dread prospect that yet more tornadoes could still strike the area and wreak further havoc.
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