• Search and rescue winds down a day after deadly Oklahoma tornado

    Slideshow: Tornadoes ravage Plains

    Destroyed vehicles lie in the rubble outside the Plaza Towers Elementary school in Moore, Okla., on Tuesday.

    Launch slideshow

    By Erin McClam, Staff Writer, NBC News

    As evening drew to a close in Oklahoma, after a day of tireless searching for survivors among the debris left behind by a powerful tornado, officials said the operation could end by nightfall Tuesday.

    "We will be through every damaged piece of property in this city at least three times before we're done and we hope to be done by dark tonight," Moore Fire Chief Gary Bird said at a news conference.

    Emergency crews and National Guard troops picked through neighborhoods without recognizable streets in a grim, house-by-house search of the blasted-out husk of a city left behind by the ferocious tornado.

    Authorities lowered the death toll to 24, less than half the figure they gave in the initial chaos after the twister, but there was still no full accounting of those missing. Nine of the confirmed dead were children, including seven in a flattened elementary school.

    Four bodies were recovered, including a 3-month-old baby, at a local 7-Eleven.

    Working with search dogs and under menacing skies, the crews meticulously combed the rubble in the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore, which took a direct hit when the tornado cut a 17-mile path of destruction on Monday afternoon.

    Dozens of people were pulled from the wreckage in the initial hours after the storm, but there were no reports of additional survivors found Tuesday — only scraps of wood, shreds of clothing, shards of glass and metal and cars crumpled into each other and into buildings. Entire stretches of Moore looked as if they had been put through a blender.

    “I mean, there’s nothing,” said Robert Foster, whose family home was destroyed. “People are walking up and down the streets. It’s really upsetting to look at. We grew up there. That’s our whole childhood. And it’s all flattened now.”

    Gov. Mary Fallin said there were 237 injured, but authorities cautioned that figure and the death toll could still rise. Even with the benefit of a full day’s light, people were only beginning to grasp the scope of the destruction in Moore and parts of Oklahoma City.

    The Oklahoma University Medical Center admitted 59 children and 34 adults.

    The National Weather Service said survey crews had found at least one area of Category EF5 damage — the highest classification for tornadoes, meaning winds had exceeded 200 mph.

    Frank Keating, a former Oklahoma governor, said on MSNBC that as many as 20,000 families could be displaced.

    “This was the storm of storms,” Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett said.

    The first of the victims was publicly identified — Ja’Nae Hornsby, a third-grader who was killed when the tornado demolished Plaza Towers Elementary School. She was remembered by her family Tuesday as full of joy and fond of playing dress-up. Her relatives gathered at a Baptist church in Oklahoma City to console each other.

    A second victim, Hemant Bhonde, 65, became separated from his wife when the tornado struck their home, his family told NBC News. Bhonde's body was recovered Tuesday, hospital officials said. His wife survived.

    Tannen Maury / EPA

    Firefighters examine the rubble of a home in a destroyed neighborhood in Moore.

    As they took the measure of what they had lost, people in Moore also marveled that they were alive, and began to share stories of survival and of how they protected each other when the twister struck, announcing itself with roaring wind.

    Children from Plaza Towers Elementary School, where seven children were reported drowned in a pool of water, told of hearing sirens and running into a hall for cover, some still carrying their math books.

    A teacher, Rhonda Crosswhite, said she huddled with students in a bathroom stall and draped herself over them for cover as the storm hit.

    “One of my little boys, he just kept saying, ‘I love you, I love you, please don’t die with me, please don’t die with me,’” she told TODAY. “But we’re OK. And we made it out, and it finally stopped.”

    She said all her students were accounted for.

    Damian Britton, a fourth-grader, credited “Miss Crosswhite” with saving his life. He estimated it took about five minutes for the twister to pass through before the students emerged from cover to survey the damage and check on their classmates.

    “It was just a disaster,’’ he said. “There was just a bunch of stuff thrown around and the cars were tipped over, and it smelled like gas.”

    At an afternoon news conference, Bird said that search dogs were no longer “making any hits” at the school. He said no one had been found there Tuesday but cautioned that the search was still active.

    “They will not declare that structure clear until they are down to the ground and have been through every piece of rubble in that building,” he said.

    One child was killed at Briarwood Elementary School, elsewhere in Moore, said police Sgt. Jeremy Lewis. There was no word on how the ninth child died. Besides the 19 deaths in Moore, five were killed in southern neighborhoods of Oklahoma City.

    Charlie Riedel / AP

    Zac Woodcock salvages items from the rubble of a tornado-ravaged rental home in Moore.

    Authorities said they hoped to have every home, business and car in Moore searched by nightfall. They worked under the threat of still more severe weather. Forecasters said parts of Oklahoma and Texas, including Dallas, were at risk for more tornadoes.

    The tornado Monday spent 40 minutes on the ground, said Rick Smith of the National Weather Service.

    “We’ve seen numerous structures that are wiped clean to the foundation,” he said.

    Smith said that the first severe thunderstorm warning had gone out 44 minutes before the tornado touched down, and the first tornado warning 16 minutes ahead. The weather service said the storm, at its widest, stretched 1.3 miles.

    President Barack Obama called it “one of the most destructive tornadoes in history.” Speaking from the White House, he pledged the full help of the federal government and said there was no time to waste.

    “In an instant, neighborhoods were destroyed, dozens of people lost their lives, many more were injured, and among the victims were young children trying to take shelter in the safest place they knew, their school,” he said. “So our prayers are with the people of Oklahoma today.”

    Fallin, after a helicopter tour that traced the tornado’s path, said searchers were having trouble because “the streets are just gone. The signs are just gone.”

    Expressions of grief and support came from across the world. Pope Francis said on Twitter: “I am close to the families of all who died in the Oklahoma tornado, especially those who lost young children. Join me in praying for them.”

    Queen Elizabeth II extended her deepest sympathies, and House Speaker John Boehner ordered flags at the Capitol to half-staff.

    Relief efforts sprang up. The NBA’s Oklahoma City Thunder and its star player, Kevin Durant, each pledged $1 million. Others helped as they could: Miles from Moore, people went on Facebook to post family photos that had landed in their yards, hoping to match them with their owners.

    Aerial pictures of the destruction brought to mind Joplin, the Missouri town virtually wiped off the map two years ago when an EF5 tornado killed 158 people and caused $2.8 billion in damage.

    The twister cut a path similar to a tornado outbreak that ravaged Oklahoma and Kansas on May 3, 1999, killing 46 people and damaging or destroying more than 8,000 homes. Wind in that outbreak was clocked at 318 mph, the fastest ever recorded on earth.

    Officials in Moore complained earlier this year about foot-dragging by the federal government over $2 million in federal grants for “safe rooms” in 800 homes to protect them from severe weather.

    A spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency told NBC News the agency was looking into the claim.

    The city’s website also said, however, that Moore faced only a 1 to 2 percent chance of a tornado on any spring day, and that if a tornado did strike, there was less than a 1 percent chance that it would be as strong as the 1999 tornado.

    Monday’s storm beat those odds. Alfredo Corrales and Viviana Lune rode it out in a shelter beneath their house. Corrales told TODAY that they had hunkered down there and heard voices above, and popped open the door to find several neighbors asking to come in.

    The wind was so strong, Corrales said, that he and a neighbor had to hold the cellar door shut. When they emerged, they found a rewritten landscape.

    “I saw basically nothing,” Luna said. “There were no fences there anymore, trees were snapped in half, roofs of houses were gone. Everything from people’s houses and even from neighborhoods across the street was laying in our yards. Half of the roof is torn off, the garage is caved in — it's just a total mess.”

    More on the Oklahoma tornado:

    How to help Oklahoma tornado victims

    Tornado survivors: A 48-hour window of opportunity

    ‘The school started coming apart’: Trapped students had nowhere to hide

    ‘Bless you for posting’: Facebook group reunites tornado victims with photos, documents

    Curse or coincidence? Scientists study Tornado Alley's past and future

    NBC News' Jeff Black, Tracy Connor, Becky Bratu and Kristen Welker contributed to this report, as did NBC News contributor Alex Hannaford and The Associated Press.

    This story was originally published on Tue May 21, 2013 8:55 PM EDT

  • More rough weather blanketed country on Tuesday

    Slideshow: Tornadoes ravage Plains

    Ed Zurga / EPA

    A monster tornado hit Moore, Okla., Monday afternoon, leaving at least 24 dead as the threat of further storms continues.

    Launch slideshow

    By Andrew Rafferty and Jason Cumming, NBC News

    Tornado warnings were in effect all over the map on Tuesday, with areas from the Midwest to the Northeast being advised to take precautions during what was another day of wild and severe weather.

    There were no significant tornado threats overnight, but parts of the country may be in danger of seeing twisters Wednesday afternoon, Weather Channel meteorologist Carl Parker said.  However it is unlikely that any potential tornadoes formed in the next 24 hours would be anywhere near the size of the one that ravaged Oklahoma on Monday, according to Parker.

    Ohio and areas near the Great Lakes are most at risk of damaging wind gusts, large hail and tornadoes on Wednesday, according to The Weather Channel.

    More from weather.com

    Michael Welch captures dramatic video of twister from a KFC parking lot in Newcastle, Oklahoma.

    It is better news than Tuesday, when 9.5 million people were in danger of experiencing "large and devastating" tornadoes as the deadly storm system moved east, forecasters warned.

    And it was not just contained to Tornado Alley. Areas of western Massachusetts and Connecticut as well as eastern New York State also were issued tornado warnings Tuesday evening.

    While many of these places have been experiencing strong winds and rain, none reported any twisters.

    Tornado watches were in effect for portions of Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Missouri and Tennessee until 11 p.m. ET. Eastern Texas, central Louisiana and Mississippi were issued a severe thunderstorm warning going into Wednesday morning.

    Severe rain and flooding caused havoc throughout the Dallas-Fort Worth area Tuesday afternoon. Area schools let out early and even the Dallas zoo closed to protect animals and visitors.

    Weather Channel forecaster Bill Karins said the upcoming holiday weekend may provide some relief.

    "An early look at Memorial Day weekend shows that most of the country should be quiet. The stormiest weather appears to be across the Plains and Midwest with scattered showers and thunderstorms," he said.

     

    This story was originally published on Wed May 22, 2013 12:03 AM EDT

  • Army general suspended from duties amid adultery investigation

    US Army

    Army Brigadier General Bryan T. Roberts.

    By Courtney Kube and Jim Miklaszewski , NBC News

    Army Brigadier General Bryan T. Roberts, the Commanding General of the U.S. Army Training Center and Fort Jackson, located in Fort Jackson, S.C., is being investigated for adultery and for being involved in a physical altercation, the Army announced Tuesday. Roberts has been suspended from his duties.

    The altercation allegedly involved Roberts and an unidentified woman he is now being investigated for having an affair with, a U.S. military official told NBC News. The two were apparently involved in a recent argument. While making up, Roberts allegedly bit the woman’s lip, causing her to seek medical help.

    The Command and Staff page on Fort Jackson’s website showed a vacant spot under Commanding General on Tuesday evening.

    While the investigation is ongoing, Brig. Gen. Peggy Combs, Commandant of the U.S. Army Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear School at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, will serve as the interim commander.

    jackson.army.mil

    A screen shot shows Fort Jackson's senior leadership. The commanding general is notably no longer included on the page.

     

  • Jodi Arias pleads for jury to spare her life, says, 'I want everyone's pain to stop'

    Convicted killer Jodi Arias asked a jury to spare her from the death penalty and sentence her to life in prison.

    By Gil Aegerter, Staff Writer, NBC News

    Asking the jury that convicted her of murder to let her live, Jodi Arias said in a Phoenix courtroom Tuesday that she never meant to cause her victim’s family so much pain — and that if she was given a life sentence she would contribute to society.


    “This is the worst mistake of my life. It’s the worst thing I’ve ever done,” Arias said of the brutal killing of her boyfriend, Travis Alexander. “To this day, I can hardly believe I was capable of such violence.”

    Arias, 32, was found guilty earlier this month of the 2008 murder of Alexander, whose body was found in the shower of his Phoenix-area home. He was stabbed 27 times, was shot in the face and had his throat slashed.

    Jurors, after hearing tearful statements from Alexander’s brother and sister, have already ruled that Arias had been “especially cruel,” a finding that made her eligible for the death penalty under Arizona law.

    On Tuesday, Arias told the jury that during the sentencing phase she had contemplated suicide, saying, “I saw it as taking myself off of life support.” But she said thoughts of her own family kept her from following through.

    Similarly, she noted that she had made public statements that she preferred the death penalty to a life sentence. But she said that at the time she had "lost perspective" and now realized the pain her death would cause her family.

    “I’m asking you, please, please don’t do that to them,” she told the jurors.

    "I’ve already hurt them so badly, along with so many other people. I want everyone’s healing to begin, and I want everyone’s pain to stop."

    Before Arias gave her statement, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Sherry Stephens noted that it was not made under oath and not subject to cross-examination.

    A glimpse inside the Estrella Jail in Phoenix, Ariz., where convicted murderer Jodi Arias has lived for the past four years. Arias spends 23 hours a day in her jail cell, which is located in a maximum security area of the facility. NBC's Diana Alvear reports.

    Arias told jurors that if they gave her a life sentence, she could still make a contribution to society, something she didn’t realize when she thought of suicide.

    “I didn’t know then that if I got life instead of death, I could become employed and self-reliant,” Arias said.

    She said she also would like to participate in volunteer programs in prison. Arias said that since her arrest she had made three donations of her hair to Locks of Love, a program that provides wigs to cancer patients, and would like to continue donations. She also spoke of starting a recycling program in prison. 

    She said she also would like to teach Spanish and American Sign Language to other prisoners and to help other women to learn to read.

    "Along the lines of literacy, I’d like to start a book club or a reading group, something that brings people together in a positive and constructive way," she said.

    Holding up a white v-neck T-shirt that had the word “Survivor” across the front, Arias said she had designed it with the idea that 100 percent of the proceeds from sales would go to nonprofit groups helping victims of domestic violence. Arias had argued during the trial that she killed Alexander in response to abuse by him.

    “Some people may not believe that I am a survivor of domestic violence. They’re entitled to their opinion,” she told jurors. “I’m supporting this cause because it is very, very important to me.”

    Rob Schumacher / AP file

    Jodi Arias, seen in court on May 15, told the jury: "I want everyone's pain to stop."

    After Arias finished her statement, the judge gave the jury instructions for making their decision on the penalty.

    Tuesday afternoon, Arias' defense attorney Jennifer Willmott told jurors that Arias' life should be spared because of several mitigating factors, including the abuse that Arias says she suffered, a borderline personality disorder that a doctor described, and a lack of criminal record. Willmott also said that Arias could still be a productive person in prison.

    But prosecutor Juan Martinez said Arias' lies and actions should disqualify many of the defense's assertions from counting as mitigating factors. He asked jurors to remember that Travis Alexander would remain frozen in time at age 30. 

    Jurors began deliberating at about 3 p.m. Tuesday. Their verdict must be unanimous; if they can't agree on a sentence, a new jury will be impaneled, Reuters reported.

    The Arias case, with its lurid details, has been widely followed. Arias and Alexander had broken up after an affair. Arias testified that she had acted out Alexander’s every fantasy and even converted to his Mormon faith, but he nonetheless broke up with her and began dating — chastely, he told her — other women.

    According to testimony by some of Alexander’s friends, Arias began stalking her former beau and slashed his tires. Her extreme jealousy culminated in Alexander’s gruesome murder on June 4, 2008, the prosecutor argued.

    Arias dyed her hair, turned off her phone and drove 1,000 miles from California to Alexander’s home in Arizona, then killed him after having sex with him.

    NBC News' Diana Alvear and Erin McClam contributed to this report.

    Related:

  • Satellites watch the march of deadly Oklahoma tornado from space

    This GOES 13 satellite movie was generated using satellite photos from NASA/NOAA. It shows the tornado outbreak supercell thunderstorms that developed across portions of the Great Plains on Sunday and Monday.

    By Clara Moskowitz
    Space.com

    The progress of Monday's disastrous tornado in Oklahoma was caught from space by satellites in orbit.

    The GOES-13 satellite, which is operated by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, imaged the movement of storm systems in the south-central United States between Sunday and Monday, including the storm that sparked a tornado in Moore, Okla., estimated to be an EF-4 in strength, on Monday at 2:56 p.m. CT (3:56 p.m. ET).

    The tornado barreled through Moore, a city of about 55,000 residents in the Oklahoma City metro area, with winds that were estimated at between 166 and 200 mph (267 and 322 kilometers per hour). Dozens were killed, and property was destroyed along a 20-mile-long (32-kilometer-long) stretch of land. The system that generated that twister can be seen toward the end of the tornado video footage provided by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

    The MODIS instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite also caught sight of the storm clouds that generated the Moore tornado, in an image captured at 2:40 p.m. CT (3:40 p.m. ET).

    The GOES-13 video shows storm systems that sparked other tornadoes in the Midwest from Monday afternoon into the evening. Several separate tornadoes developed in Kansas, Iowa and Oklahoma, and the storms ran along an extended path from Texas up through Minnesota. 

    Residents in Moore, the worst-hit city, were warned of the possibility of tornadoes for days in advance by local National Weather Service offices; a tornado warning was issued 16 minutes before the tornado actually formed. This was the fourth tornado in 14 years to strike the town of Moore directly.

    Jeff Schmaltz / NASA / LANCE / EOSDIS

    This image from the MODIS instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite, captured at 2:40 p.m. local time Monday, shows the supercell thunderstorm that spawned a devastating tornado. The red line indicates the track of the twister that hit Moore, Okla.

    NASA / NOAA

    A nighttime image from the Suomi NPP satellite shows the lights of Oklahoma City and the huge clouds of a thunderstorm, with lightning flashes recorded as squarish blocks of light within the clouds.

    Hours after the tornado hit, the Suomi NPP satellite provided nighttime imagery of the Oklahoma City area, showing that the storm was still powerful. One image shows lightning flashing at 2:27 a.m. CT (3:27 a.m. ET). The pictures from the Suomi NPP satellite's Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite showed city lights in the area, but there was reduced light output in Moore as a result of tornado damage. 

    This report was updated by NBC News Digital. Follow Clara Moskowitz on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

    Copyright 2013 Space.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

    This story was originally published on Tue May 21, 2013 1:04 PM EDT

  • Oklahoma tornado: How to find people, pets

    Google

    Google's Crisis Response Center provides information and compiles resources to aid tornado survivors and their loved ones.

    By Rosa Golijan

    In the aftermath of one of the deadliest tornadoes in U.S. history, many are desperately trying to reach loved ones in areas affected by the disastrous event. Google and the Red Cross are helping confirm the safety of tornado survivors, while the Oklahoma Humane Society and Reddit users band together to take care of missing pets.

    Google Crisis Response Center and Person Finder
    Google has set up a Crisis Response Center page on which it provides shelter information, weather reports, public alerts and links to a variety of resources to aid those in or around the towns of Moore, Newcastle and southern portions of Oklahoma City. The search giant has also enabled the Google Person Finder tool at a plain and simple-to-use site for sharing and gathering information about those missing after the tornado. The tool was originally created after the 2010 Haiti earthquake.

    As with previous versions of the tool, all someone needs to do is enter as much of a person's name as he or she knows and Google will provide any related information — including last known location, physical descriptions, last reported status and messages left by those searching for the individual.

    Those seeking to add information to the database will need to provide the full name of the individual they've got information about, as well as their own names and e-mail addresses.

    The American Red Cross' 'Safe and Well'
    The American Red Cross' "Safe and Well" page is also serving as a way to confirm that loved ones are doing all right. It functions similarly to the Google Person Finder, but instead focuses on individuals listing themselves as "safe and well," in addition to letting others search for loved ones.

    Oklahoma Humane Society
    Efforts are being made to ensure that pets make their ways home safely as well. The Oklahoma Humane Society is doing its best to house and treat lost and injured animals. The organization's Development Office, which is collecting donations for a disaster relief fund, can be reached at (405) 607-8991.

    Reddit
    Reddit users are banding together to keep track of lost and found pets     in the town of Moore. Photos of, and information about, lost and found animals is easily searchable on the site.

    Facebook
    A Facebook page, May 19th 2013 OK Tornado Doc & Picture Recovery, is helping unite photos and documents scattered by the tornado with survivors. 

    Related:

    Want more tech news or interesting links? You'll get plenty of both if you keep up with Rosa Golijan, the writer of this post, by following her on Twitter, subscribing to her Facebook posts, or circling her on Google+.

  • 'Deeply saddened': Pope, UK queen lead worldwide condolences after Oklahoma tornado

    Evening Standard

    London's Evening Standard newspaper reports on the tornado in Oklahoma.

    By Alastair Jamieson, Claudio Lavanga and Amna Nawaz, NBC News

    Pope Francis and Britain’s queen sent messages of condolence to those affected by the deadly Oklahoma tornado Tuesday, as news of the devastation spread around the world.

    "I am close to the families of all who died in the Oklahoma tornado, especially those who lost young children,” the pontiff posted on his Twitter feed. “Join me in praying for them."

    The U.S. Embassy in London thanked British well-wishers for their expressions of support.

    In a statement issued by Buckingham Palace officials, Queen Elizabeth said: "I was deeply saddened to hear of the loss of life and devastation caused by yesterday’s tornado in Oklahoma."

    "Prince Philip joins me in offering our heartfelt condolences to the victims and their families at this difficult time. Our deepest sympathies go out to all those whose lives have been affected, as well as the American people," she added.

    Canada's foreign minister John Baird said he was "shocked and saddened" at the devastation.

    "Canada stands with those affected, ready to assist," he added.

    Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement that the government and people of the country were “deeply saddened and shocked at the humanitarian tragedy unleashed on the Oklahoma State by a devastating tornado.”

    “Our sympathies and prayers go out to the families of victims of this horrific incident that led to precious loss of life and property,” the statement said. “We are particularly grieved over the loss of innocent children and their teachers who were buried under the rubble.”

    “May God Almighty give courage and strength to the bereaved families to bear this irreparable loss. The people of Pakistan stand hand in hand with the people of Oklahoma at this difficult time,” it added.

    Full coverage of the Oklahoma tornadoes from NBC News

    This story was originally published on Tue May 21, 2013 9:01 AM EDT

  • 'Bless you for posting': Facebook group reunites tornado victims with photos, documents

    Glen Adkisson via Facebook

    This photo was posted on Facebook by Glen Adkisson after tornadoes struck Oklahoma on Monday. "This was in our yard 5/20/2013...Collinsville," he wrote.

    By F. Brinley Bruton, Staff Writer, NBC News

    The photo shows a baby in diapers on a high chair gazing at a white cake with one pink candle.  

    Glen Adkisson of Collinsville, Okla., posted on Facebook that it had been found "in our yard" following Monday's devastating tornadoes.

    Allison Messer via Facebook

    This photo was posted on Facebook by Allison Messer after a tornado struck Oklahoma, with the message "Found in our pasture between Stroud & Depew. Would love to find the momma this belongs too."

    The message below reads: "This photo is of my sisters deceased husband when he was a child. We are from Shawnee Oklahoma. She did live in the trailer park. She and my 7 year old nephew lost their home. I will try to contact u va Facebook. Bless you for posting this!"

    This exchange appears on a Facebook page -- May 19th 2013 OK Tornado Doc & Picture Recovery -- set up to return photos and documents to victims of a deadly storm system that has ripped across the state. 

    Early Tuesday, the page included hundreds of family photos and documents.  A picture of a cat with one blue eye sat next to another of a woman in a camp chair holding two blond and grinning children. A grimy electricity bill was next to the stained photograph of a toddler sitting on Santa's knee.  An ultrasound photo showed what appeared to be a baby in utero.

    Some postings had happy endings, with pets and pictures being reunited with their families.

    A photo of a brown-haired young man cuddling a smiling girl with long caramel-colored hair elicited an overjoyed response from Dana Davis: “this is my picture it was in my room at my sisters and her house got destroyed by the tornado by lake thunderbird !”

    Becky Miller, one of the page’s administrators, knew the photos and documents that landed on the ground as so-called falling debris, might look like detritus but were in fact irreplaceable artifacts or documents for somebody.  

    This photo was posted on Facebook by Kristi Hodge after a tornado struck Oklahoma with the message "Found 2 miles south of Ramona at 815 PM floating from the sky."

    “People had falling debris 100 miles away – people were saying it is raining debris in the yard,” said the resident of Liberty, Okla., which is about two hours away from Oklahoma City.  “That’s what started it. I wanted people reunited with precious pictures or colored pictures – you can’t replace those in a disaster.”

    Indeed, Jeremy-Trista Blevins posted a ripped picture of three children – the smallest a bald and smiling baby – that she says she found in Sand Spring, 119 miles from where the hurricane struck.

    The page, which was started by Leslie Edgar Hagelberg, Miller’s cousin, and her sister, Sarah Miller-Deibert, quickly turned into a sort of clearing house, attracting others trying to help those in need.

    Diana Gann’s plea for help subduing a traumatized mule prompted almost 150 responses. 

    A posting originally on Photos of Moore Oklahoma Tornado Pets Lost & Found and cross-linked on May 19th 2013 OK Tornado Doc showed a nervous-looking black lab.

    "3 dogs rescued from Moore tornado! Bathed, and cared for at rescuers home. Want to reunite them back with their families," the message with the photo read. "Prayer to all our furry friends and families."

    Erin Lang via Facebook

    Erin Lang posted this photo on Facebook after Monday's tornado in Moore, Okla., writing: "3 dogs rescued from Moore tornado! Bathed, and cared for at rescuers home. Want to reunite them back with their families. Please spread the word and contact Erin Lang or Carey Ralstin on Facebook! Prayer to all our furry friends and families."

    And down the page another message from Farah Payton-Snider declared: "The black Lab is my (friend's)... dog Tin. Please call me ASAP."

    Payton-Snider, 36, said she would close her flower shop and head into Oklahoma City first thing in the morning to try and help reunite people who had been hit by the tornado with their pets.

    "I feel helpless, I want to be able to do something," said Payton-Snider, who lives in Newcastle, Okla.  

    Related:

     

     

     

     

    This story was originally published on Tue May 21, 2013 6:21 AM EDT

  • 'The school started coming apart': Trapped students had nowhere to hide

    Sue Ogrocki / AP

    A child calls to his father after being pulled from the rubble of the Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore, Okla., on Monday.

    By Mike Brunker, Investigations Editor, NBC News

    When the sirens began blaring and teachers at Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore, Okla., heard that a monstrous tornado was roaring toward their 57-year-old school and its youngest students, there was nowhere to hide.

    They crouched in hallways and bathrooms, waiting, hoping and praying. Then "the school started coming apart," one neighbor who sought shelter at the school told the Associated Press. A teacher told NBC station KFOR that she draped herself on top of six children in a bathroom to shelter them.

    The massive twister scored a direct hit at 3 p.m. (4 p.m. ET), tearing off the roof of the mostly one-story public school, a cinder-block building that had no chance of withstanding shrieking winds that may have topped 200 mph -- the powerful outer edge of what the National Weather Service said was at least an EF4 tornado, the second-most-powerful rating.

    KFOR television reporter Jesse Wells reports Plaza Towers Elementary school was totally destroyed. Most of the walls of the school have collapsed, and cars were thrown into the front of the building. Emergency crews continue to look for kids who may still be inside.

    By Tuesday morning, the death toll at the school stood at seven. Officials said the children drowned in a pool of water at the decimated school. Rescuers were continuing to dig through the school’s rubble, from which several children were pulled out alive Monday evening.

    It's unclear if any other children were killed or trapped alive.

    Hysterical parents who had converged on the sprawling pile of broken concrete and twisted metal were later taken to a church to await word on the fate of their youngsters.

    The two-mile-wide tornado wiped out entire city blocks of Moore, the hardest-hit Oklahoma City suburb, killing at least 24 people, the state medical examiner office confirmed. Many of the dead are children.

    Exactly what transpired at Plaza Towers in the minutes before the tornado unleashed its destructive power has yet to be described. School officials evacuated fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders to a church about a quarter-mile away before it touched down, but the younger students – kindergartners through third graders – remained at the 440-student school, according to KFOR in Oklahoma City. It was not immediately known why school officials divided the students.

    Bing (top) | AP (bottom)

    Before and after aerial photos of Plaza Towers Elementary School.

    But Mayer Nudell, a security and safety consultant, did not fault the decision to ride out the storm at the school.

    “For something like a tornado, it’s fairly academic,” he said of the options that school officials would have had once the sirens began. “You don’t go out, and you don’t have much warning.”

    Despite the carnage at the school, “shelter in place” has emerged as a staple of disaster planning and the strategy of choice for a range of emergencies, including tornadoes. And studies show it has a good track record of saving lives.

    On May 3, 1999, for example, when another monster tornado roared through Moore, some 300 students and their parents were attending an awards ceremony in the West Moore High School auditorium. Though the twister badly damaged the school and tossed 150 cars in the parking lot like tinker-toys, those who hunkered down in the school’s hallways suffered only a few superficial injuries.

    But there are experts who say that having a large number of people crowded into a big building is a bad idea when maximum-force tornadoes are sweeping through an area.

    Chief among them is Joe R. Eagleman, a professor emeritus of the University of Kansas and author of “Severe and Unusual Weather,” a meteorology standard since it was first published in 1983.

    He agrees that there was likely insufficient time between the first warning and the time the tornado hit the school, constructed in 1966, for Plaza Towers administrators to consider sending students home. “If time is short, being caught out in the open is not good,” he said.

    But he said dispersing the students to their homes would have improved their odds.

    “If there is sufficient warning time, the homes would be typically safer because they are smaller buildings and offer more opportunity to get in a downwind corner of the likely approach,” he said.

    Eagleman is widely credited with debunking what was the prevailing school of thought on tornadoes for much of the last century: that the safest spot to take shelter is the southwest corner of a building. The reasoning behind the fallacy was that, since most U.S. tornadoes travel from west-southwest to the east-northeast, a twister would hurl debris into the northeast corner of whatever building it hit, likely taking out anyone cowering there.

    Witness Michael Welch captures dramatic video of a twister from a KFC parking lot in Newcastle, Oklahoma.

    But Eagleman conducted an extensive study after an EF5 tornado hit Topeka, Kan., in 1966, and found that the southwest corner – the direction from which a tornado was most likely to approach – was in fact the most dangerous area to hide.

    “It used to be a rule that the southwest corner was the safest, no questions asked, but it was not based on any data,” he said.

    Once Plaza Towers officials made the decision to have the students and teachers shelter in place, the school’s disaster plan would have kicked in. The staff and student body would likely have been well-coached, given the school’s location in “Tornado Alley” and Moore’s history of destructive tornadoes, though Eagleman noted that “it varies all over the place as to what the planning has been for severe storms.”

    In any case, students would have been moved into a hallway or small room away from the southwest corner of the building and any windows and instructed to either sit or crouch.

    “You want a place that is structurally secure, without windows, so you don’t have to worry about flying glass,” said Nudell, who also is an adjunct professor of security management at Webster University in Webster Groves, Mo., and co-author of “The Handbook for Effective Emergency and Crisis Management.”

    Both men said the school’s construction would have been important to its ability to withstand a powerful twister.

    “The buildings that are made of reinforced concrete are typically very sturdy,” Eagleman said. “Those made with concrete blocks are not.”

    But given the destruction visible after the tornado swept through Moore, it’s possible that no building would have withstood the intense pressure that the tornado brought to bear on the building, Nudell said.

    Nudell also cautioned against jumping to conclusions about the emergency planning or safety of the school.

    “When you get a tornado like the one that it sounds like hit Oklahoma, sometimes all the preparation and planning in the world doesn’t help you,” he said.

    NBC News' Erin McClam and Tracy Connor contributed to this report.

    Related stories: 

     

  • 'Oh, my God!': KFC cook records dramatic footage of monster tornado

    Michael Welch captures dramatic video of twister from a KFC parking lot in Newcastle, Oklahoma.

    By Jeff Black, Staff Writer, NBC News

    Michael Welch was midshift into his job at KFC in Newcastle, Okla., on Monday afternoon when he noticed hail pounding the parking lot outside the restaurant.

    Then, as he looked into the distance, he saw the wall cloud of an enormous tornado rotating in front of him.

    “It was very large and very fast,” he said.  “I could see debris flying all over.”

    The 24-year-old cook grabbed his HTC cell phone and dashed into the parking lot and started recording video. “Probably not the best thing to do, but I did it.”

    Most of his coworkers took shelter, but his manager stayed at the door while he filmed, Welch said.

    “Oh, my God!” he screams on his video -- seen by thousands on NBC News and YouTube -- as the tornado, which killed at least 24 people and injured scores more in the area, passes. 

    He said an F4 tornado that hit his house in Blanchard on May 24, 2011, helped alleviate his fear.

    “I think that gave me the courage to go ahead and go outside,” he said. “The power of the funnel cloud was amazing."

    He said he had no idea a storm was coming until he saw it with his own eyes.

    But now, his YouTube video showing a street-level view of the massive tornado plowing through Newcastle and Moore stands as an iconic record of the day’s event.

    “I’ve talked to so many people today I can’t even count ,” he said.

    Related:

  • Curse or coincidence? Scientists study Tornado Alley's past and future

    National Weather Service

    This map shows the track of a tornado on May 3, 1999, in green; and the track of Monday's tornado in red. The similarity of the paths is coincidental, but the larger patterns of storm activity in "Tornado Alley" are due in part to the region's geography.

    By Alan Boyle and John Roach, NBC News

    Do tornadoes follow well-worn tracks? Where do the deadliest twisters hit? Will climate change make such storms worse? Monday's devastating tornado in Oklahoma raises some questions for which scientists have ready answers, and others that could puzzle them for years to come:

    Was this tornado a repeat of a famous twister in 1999?

    For a time, Monday's storm followed a track that was similar to the path of a tornado with the fastest wind speed ever recorded, 318 mph (512 kilometers per hour), which occurred on May 3, 1999. That twister was one of 74 tornadoes that touched down in Oklahoma and Kansas in less than 21 hours, according to the National Severe Storms Laboratory. The 1999 outbreak of severe weather caused 46 deaths and nearly $1.5 billion in property damage.

    The tracks weren't all that similar, however: Monday's tornado took a more southerly route as it moved east. And there's nothing unique about the area's geography to make it a magnet for super-powerful twisters, according to Bob Henson, a tornado expert with the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.

    "If there were geographic features, that would tend to cause multiple tornadoes every few years," the meteorologist and writer told NBC News. "Well, why has this been happening only since 1999?"

    The similarity in the tracks of these devastating storms is "a good example for how weather events can be clustered in ways that are striking yet ultimately coincidental," Henson said.

    A classic example of this phenomenon, he noted, is Codell, Kan., which was hit by tornadoes on the same day — May 20 — in 1916, 1917, and 1918. The third tornado killed 10 people and destroyed a part of the community. "That's a good illustration of how sometimes things like this can just happen in clusters," he said.

    NOAA SPC

    The purple streaks on this map from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Storm Prediction Center stand for tornado tracks from 1950 to 2011. The dark blotches indicate population densities.

    But isn't Tornado Alley more prone to deadly twisters?

    On a wider scale, the geography of America's midsection makes it more prone to tornadoes than any other region on Earth. That's because the Rocky Mountains tend to impede the eastward flow of moist air, while the Great Plains allow frigid Arctic air to stream southward from Canada and meet up with warm, humid air from the Gulf of Mexico. It's the collision of that warm and cold air that breeds powerful twisters.

    "Tornado Alley" generally refers to the region centered in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and points north, where tornadoes are most frequent — but multiple studies indicate that the deadliest twisters occur to the east, in a region that's come to be known as "Dixie Alley." The reasons for that have to do with geography and demographics as well as meteorology in the southeastern United States: Storms tend to move faster, and they're more likely to strike at night. There are more trees and other obstructions to raise havoc. Population densities are generally higher, and the region has many manufactured homes that lack basements in which to take shelter.

    The United States has the highest incidence of tornadoes, with an average of more than 1,000 every year, according to the National Climatic Data Center. But other regions of the world have twisters as well. Canada is No. 2 with about 100 per year, followed by northern Europe, western Asia, Bangladesh, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, China, South Africa and Argentina. Britain has more tornadoes than any other country, relative to its land area. "Fortunately, most UK tornadoes are relatively weak," the data center says.

    Why do these tornadoes seem to be hitting all of a sudden?

    After a relatively quiet start to the tornado season, tornadoes have been erupting from Texas to Minnesota over the past week. A cold front advancing to the east appears to be to blame. That pocket of cold air has run into warm air from the Gulf, causing the warm air to rise and spawning powerful thunderstorms. "It's kind of like the perfect setup," Jeff Weber, a scientist with the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, told LiveScience.

    The earlier calm was due to the fact that jet stream had been dipping farther south than usual for this time of year. That kept the Gulf's warm, moist air from advancing into Tornado Alley. Now that warm air is pushing northward, and the cold front has moved on to Minnesota and Wisconsin. As a result, the storm system that created Monday's big tornado should soon weaken, Weber said.

    Will climate change make tornadoes worse? More frequent?

    "The short answer is, we have no idea," Michael Wehner, a climate researcher at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, told NBC News. For years, Wehner has been studying the climate models for extreme weather, and he's a lead author for the next report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as well as the federal government's latest national assessment on climate change.

    One problem is that the observational record for tornadoes has not been uniform over time. "It has a bias to it, because more people are living where tornadoes occur, and more people are out looking for them," Wehner said. That contributes to the perception that tornadoes are happening more frequently than they used to.

    The other big problem is that current climate models don't have the resolution that's needed to simulate the localized, violent activity of a tornado. Currently, global models are built up from atmospheric interactions on a scale of 100 kilometers (62 miles). Improvements in computer power could soon bring that down to a scale of 25 kilometers (16 miles). That should make it possible for scientists to simulate the weather phenomena that give rise to tornadoes, but not the tornadoes themselves, Wehner said.

    On a larger scale, extreme weather events are expected to become more frequent in a warmer world, Wehner said. "The metric that I like to look at is the daily amount of rain for a storm that happens once every 20 years," he said. "That storm, in a much warmer world, would happen more frequently." For example, if the world follows a "business-as-usual" scenario, he projects that the average temperature would rise 11 degrees Fahrenheit (6 degrees Celsius) by the end of the century, and that a once-in-20-years rainstorm would come around every five to 10 years on average.

    That doesn't necessarily mean tornadoes would be more frequent, however. In fact, the current projection calls for wetter spring weather in the northern U.S., and drier weather in the Southwest — with Tornado Alley right in the middle. "There's some evidence that there might not be a change" in the character of a tornado season, Wehner observed.

    Wehner may sound a bit apologetic about the lack of clear answers in the short term, but in the long term, he's optimistic. "The reason I'm optimistic that we can get somewhere on this is that supercomputing technology is driving this very hard," he said. "We're just getting into the sweet spot for these kinds of issues, with the largest mainframes that money can buy."

    More about tornado science:

    Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with him by "liking" the NBC News Science Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding him to your Google+ circles.

    John Roach is a contributing writer for NBC News. To learn more about him, visit his website. 

    This story was originally published on Mon May 20, 2013 8:20 PM EDT

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