My comment:  Pray for the families of these children and other victims.

(Daily Mail)  Rescuers have uncovered the bodies of seven children believed to have drowned in a pool of water under the flattened Plaza Towers Elementary School and up to 30 more students are also feared dead after a two mile-wide tornado touched down in a highly-populated suburb of Oklahoma City on Monday.

Teams on site had reported hearing cries for help from beneath the rubble at the elementary school that was flattened in the worst storm the area has ever seen but these screams reportedly stopped at around 6:30 p.m. and shortly after it was reported that the search and rescue mission had become a recovery mission with scores of little ones feared dead, buried under the rubble, as their frantic parents wait for news at a nearby church.

KWTVreports that 37 people have now been confirmed dead by the Medical Examiner’s Office including a three-month-old baby and a four-year-old child in the area of Moore, Oklahoma, and three people were killed at a 7-Eleven. Local hospitals said that more than 60 injured residents had flooded into emergency rooms – but these numbers are expected to rise.

The National Guard and first responders with dogs has been drafted in to help rescuers search the debris at Plaza Towers Elementary School after the massive storm that has been given a preliminary rating of EF-4 rating barreled through the area of 170,000 residents shortly after 3pm Monday.

Devastating aerial images taken immediately afterwards show the school – as well as hundreds of homes and businesses – completely leveled with cars that have clearly been thrown into the school grounds by the storm. Students who were inside the building described clinging to the walls of the hallway where many of them huddled during the storm as the twister battered the school. Others cowered in closets to protect themselves.

Devastation: A woman carries her child through a field near the collapsed Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore, Oklahoma, today after the devastating tornado

A fire burns in the Tower Plaza Addition in Moore, Oklahoma

A boy is pulled from beneath a collapsed wall at the Plaza Towers Elementary School

Survivors: A child is pulled from the rubble of the Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore, Oklahoma, and passed along to rescuers

Flattened: Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore before and after today’s tornado

A monstrous tornado roared through the Oklahoma City suburbs, flattening entire neighborhoods with winds up to 200 mph, setting buildings on fire and landing a direct blow on an elementary school

KFOR reported that third graders were being pulled from the wreckage alive at Plaza Towers as rescue workers passed children down a human chain before taking them to a triage center set up in the school’s parking lot.

Staff said there had been at least 75 people taking shelter in the hallway of the building when the tornado hit. One teacher said she had laid on six children to protect them. It is believed another teacher put her life at risk to cover three students and suffered serious injuries. The 4th, 5th, and 6th grade students were taken from the school to a church before the twister barreled through.

President Obama has called to offer any kind of assistance to the devastated areas, Oklahoma governor Mary Fallin said, adding that three search and rescue teams with dogs from out of state were coming to help. She told Oklahomans to ‘stay away and let the our search and rescue teams and families get in there’.

A reporter said they asked a paramedic about the injured at Plaza Towers, and the medic ‘just shook his head’.

Briarwood Elementary was also entirely flattened after staff sent an email to parents at 2.45pm to say that the school was on lockdown and they would be holding the children at the campus until the storm had passed. At 5pm local time, authorities said all the children were accounted for.

A meteorologist for KFOR branded the aftermath ‘the worst tornado damage in the history of the world’.

Dozens of people have piled into hospitals, according to officials of three medical centers.

Integris Southwest Medical center in Oklahoma City, which has the biggest emergency room in the state, had received 19 patients, said Integris spokeswoman Brooke Cayot. Of those, seven were in critical condition, seven in serious and five listed as fair or good.

‘They (injured) are coming in minute by minute,’ said Cayot.

St. Anthony Healthplex South in Oklahoma City said it received four patients but none were seriously injured.

The University of Oklahoma Medical Center had received at least 10 injured, said Scott Coppenbarger, director of public relations.

Horror: Teachers carry children away from Briarwood Elementary school after a tornado destroyed the school in south Oklahoma City

Overturned cars are seen after a huge tornado touched down in the town of Moore

Debris: Rescuers dug through mountains of debris at Plaza Towers Elementary School

Heroes: Rescue workers dig through the rubble of a collapsed wall at the Plaza Tower Elementary School to free trapped students

Brave: A boy is pulled from beneath a collapsed wall at the Plaza Towers Elementary School following a tornado in Moore, Oklahoma

Fear: A child calls to his father after being pulled from the rubble of the Tower Plaza Elementary School

Brave teachers: A woman is pulled out from under tornado debris at the Plaza Towers School in Moore

Scenes of devastation: Debris fills land where homes once stood after a massive tornado barreled through Moore, Oklahoma on Monday

Wiped out: This photo by KFOR-TV shows homes flattened outside Moore, Oklahoma on Monday after a monstrous tornado rattled through

The National Guard and first responders with dogs has been drafted in to help rescuers search the debris at Plaza Towers Elementary School after the massive storm that has been given a preliminary rating of EF-4 rating barreled through the area of 170,000 residents

Destruction: Entire neighborhoods have been wiped out by the storm, which was on the ground for around 30 minutes, with deaths expected

Wiped out: Aerial images taken moments after, show businesses entirely wiped out. Residents heard a tornado warning around 30 minutes before it hit

Aftermath: Fires have also broken out at buildings after the monster storm thanks to exposed power lines, CNN reported

Destroyed: Other aerial images reveal vehicles destroyed among the debris as rescuers begin to head to the flattened buildings

Damage: Piles of destroyed cars can be seen at the entrance to a hospital in Moore, Oklahoma after the storm passed through on Monday afternoon

THE SCIENCE BEHIND THE STORM: HOW DID IT HAPPEN?

The severe thunderstorms that produce tornadoes form where cold dry air meets warm moist tropical air.

The wind coming into the storm starts to swirl and forms a funnel. The air in the funnel spins faster and faster and creates a very low pressure area which sucks more air – and objects on the ground into it.

Most tornadoes spin cyclonically (counter-clockwise) in the Northern hemisphere.

The twisters are most common in a section of the U.S. called Tornado Alley, with most forming in the months of April and May.

The vortex of winds varies in size and shape, and can be hundreds of meters wide.

There are, on average, 1,300 tornadoes each year in the United States, which have caused an average of 65 deaths annually in recent years.

Conditions on the ground do not generally affect the power of a tornado, including terrain and structures like buildings.

Moore, Oklahoma is within the boundaries of Tornado Alley, which includes northern Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska and South Dakota.

The city was the site of another devastating tornado that tore through the town in 1999.

Homes have been reduced to piles of trash, with at least 8,000 people without power. Experts warned that there could be multiple casualties after the storm, which had traveled east at around 160mph.

KFOR reoprter says that doctors told her of looting at the hospital damaged by the tornado.

As the first images of the destruction emerged, yet more tornadoes were also reported to be heading towards Ryan, Wilson and I-35. Experts warned that the area of Meeker could be particularly badly hit.

‘There are so many homes in the air right now,’ storm chase Spencer Basoco told CNN of Moore. ‘It’s destroying everything. There’s so much debris.’

Jamie Shelton, the public information officer for Moore, had pleaded with residents to seek shelter before the storm dissipated. ‘It’s happening as we speak,’ he said. ‘People need to take this seriously… Take precaution, be aware. If you’re outside the area, please pray for us.’

More…

• Deadly echoes of powerful 1999 tornado in today’s deadly Oklahoma City storm
• Anatomy of a twister: How tornadoes form and why they can’t be stopped

Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin explained that a school, a GM plant used by defense contractors and an Air Force base were in the storm’s path. The base has one of the largest maintenance and repair centers in the country.

CBS has pulled tonight’s season finale of ‘Mike & Molly,’ which included a storyline that involved a tornado.

It comes as yet more heartbreak for residents of Oklahoma, after a series of deadly tornadoes barreled through Kansas and Oklahoma this weekend, leaving a violent trail of destruction through the Midwest and South, killing two elderly men, injuring 39 people and flattening hundreds of homes.

The Oklahoma City area is prone to storms; in 1999, 36 people died in a tornado.

Several terrifying twisters were spotted on Saturday evening near Rozel, a sparsely populated area in central Kansas. They were also reported to the south in parts of Oklahoma and Iowa.

A National Weather Service advisory warned: ‘You could be killed if not underground or in a tornado shelter.’

‘Complete destruction of neighborhoods, businesses and vehicles will occur. Flying debris will be deadly to people and animals.’

At least four separate tornadoes touched down in central Oklahoma on Sunday afternoon, including one near the town of Shawnee, 35 miles southeast of Oklahoma City, that laid waste to much of a trailer park.

Two men, 79-year-old Glen Irish and 76-year-old Billy Hutchinson, were found dead after the tornado wrought its devastation on Shawnee, Oklahoma.

Irish’s body was found out in the open after the storm passed through, while Hutchinson was taken to Norman Regional Hospital, but later pronounced dead, according to the medical examiner.

‘You can see where there’s absolutely nothing, then there are places where you have mobile home frames on top of each other, debris piled up,’ Pottawatomie County Sheriff Mike Booth said after surviving damage in the Steelman Estates Mobile Home Park.

Gone: Images show Plaza Towers Elementary School, left, and Briarwood Elementary, right, before they were flattened in the massive storm on Monday

Threat: Skies have darkened over Moore, Oklahoma as a massive tornado begins to barrel through on Monday afternoon, threatening 107,000 residents

On its way: Footage taken by reporters near the town shows the huge storm, which could cause multiple fatalities, experts warned on Monday afternoon

Site: A map shows where the worst tornado damage was sustained in Moore, Oklahoma on Monday. The red triangles show the areas hit

Storm: Left, a hailstone in Norman. Right, residents began sharing photographs on social networking websites revealing the damage near to their homes

‘It looks like there’s been heavy equipment in there on a demolition tour. It’s pretty bad. It’s pretty much wiped out,’ he said.

Across the state, 21 people were injured, not including those who suffered bumps and bruises and chose not to visit a hospital, said Keli Cain, a spokeswoman for the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management.

Booth said six at Steelman Estates were hurt.

On Interstate 40, tractor-trailers were blown off the road, and one was seen hanging over the highway’s overpass.

Dozens of homes were damaged by the other tornadoes that touched down in Oklahoma, but emergency officials had no immediate reports of injuries caused by any of them, including the first of the afternoon that hit Edmond, a suburb north of Oklahoma City, before making its way toward Tulsa, 90 miles to the northeast.

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Categories: extreme weather

Tags: moore OK, tornadoes