As soon as she heard the tornado siren start to wail on Monday, Tracy Stephen rushed to Plaza Towers Elementary School to pick up her 6-year-old daughter Abigail. But when she got there the doors were sealed, the school locked down as a tornado with winds over 200 m.p.h. (322 km/h) drew near.

Stymied, Stephen returned home and hustled her two younger daughters into a neighbor’s cellar, just minutes before the tornado flattened the family’s home on Sixth Street West in Moore. Emerging from the shelter, she could only pray that Abigail’s school had fared better. In fact, Plaza Towers had been reduced to rubble. Seven students were among the 24 killed in the disaster, according to officials.

Stephen was one of many parents who beat a path for the school as soon as the tornado cleared. “I was like a crazy person, running towards the wreckage,” she says. “Wailing.” A mother of a classmate told her that Abigail had been killed in the collapse – a horrific mistake, it turned out, one of many in the tornado’s chaotic aftermath. Abigail, who is autistic, was waiting at a nearby home after being saved by a teaching aide, who had thrown her body over the little girl and taken the brunt of the collapse (the aide was hospitalized but is expected to recover).

(PHOTOS: Tornado Flattens Suburb Outside Oklahoma City, Kills Dozens)

Concerned about his daughter’s safety, Patrick Smith picked her up from Plaza Towers early on Monday. After riding out the tornado in his bathtub, covered by a mattress, Smith, a first responder at Cimarron Energy, made his way back to the school to help. He found dozens of kids trapped under collapsed walls, stuck in the debris. As he and other responders lifted what had earlier been parts of a classroom, he said the kids remained on the ground, too afraid to look up.

Though Stephen and Smith are thankful for their children’s lives, they are among a number of Plaza Elementary parents wondering if even more could have been saved by canceling classes for tornadoes and requiring schools to have safe spaces that can withstand them.

“People keep talking about how we only had a 16-minute warning,” says Greg Terrell, 34, a mechanical engineer from Moore who has three children. “In all reality, we’d been talking about that day for a week – that day when you know the tornadoes are going to hit, you’re just not sure precisely where. They’ll cancel school for a snow day. Why can’t they cancel it for a threat like that?”

School superintendent Susie Pierce sent an e-mail at 1:11 p.m., before the tornado, alerting all principals and school administrators that after-school activities would be canceled, but they intended to let schools out as usual at 3 p.m. That news was passed down to the parents through phone trees and text messages. Some parents went right away to pick up their kids.

(MORE: ‘It’s Like a War Zone’: Horror and Heroism in Oklahoma After Tornado Tears Through)

“I got there within an hour,” says Angie Tennyson, who has two kids in the Moore school system. “And people look at you funny when you take these warnings that seriously. But I’m glad I did. We made it into the shelter with just minutes to spare.”

That said, Tennyson doesn’t think tornado warnings should trigger automatic snow days. “There’d be no school between February and August,” Tennyson says, laughing. “It’s a small place that a tornado actually hits, and the area of the warning zone is huge.”

The decision to lock down or allow children to leave — potentially walking out into dangerous weather — is a wrenching one, says Darry Stacy, Cleveland County commissioner. Moore is in Cleveland County, as is neighboring Norman. “Last year we had a similar dilemma in Norman where there was a lightning storm just as school was getting out. We had to ask ourselves: Is it safer to let children out into a potentially dangerous situation or keep them inside, where it may be safer?” Stacy says. “Ultimately, it was decided inside was safer.”

Despite being in the heart of Tornado Alley, Plaza Towers and nearby Briarwood Elementary do not have safe rooms in the event of a tornado — unlike some other area schools. “We should have had something,” says Smith. “Somewhere to go.”

(VIDEO: Family Emerges From Tornado Shelter to Witness Carnage)

Carrie Long spent much of Saturday salvaging clothing from the ruins of her home in Moore. The 40-year-old rental-car agent has two kids in the Moore school system: a 13-year-old at Highland West Middle School and a 14-year-old at South Moore High School. Long believes more safe rooms would be the best way to address the problem. “If I’d gotten my kids out and taken them home, they’d be dead,” Long says, her eyes welling up with tears as she clutched a garbage bag full of muddy clothes. “There’s just nothing left of our home.”

Before Monday’s tornado, there had also been a debate about whether schools should be used as shelters. “People think because it’s bigger, it’s safer,” says Kristy Yager, the public-information officer for the City of Oklahoma City. “Well, we learned today the hard way that just because it’s bigger, it’s by no means safer.”

Pierce choked back tears as she apologized for the loss of life at a press conference on Tuesday. “When our children are at school, they are in our care,” she said, reading from a statement. “Moore public schools, the City of Moore and the people of Moore have suffered a devastating disaster.” Pierce said Moore schools practice more tornado drills than required by law and that the students and teachers enacted the emergency plan put in place. Still, she said, “we are reviewing our emergency procedures today.”

Some disasters, however, will trump the best preparation. “No drill — no safe room, even — is going to help when the whole school falls down,” says Jeremy Lewis, the public-information officer for the Moore police.

— With reporting by James McGirk / Moore

PHOTOS: Moments of Hope in Oklahoma: One Photographer’s Story

Article source: http://nation.time.com/2013/05/22/wrenching-decisions-as-tornado-flattens-school/

Story Updated:
May 22, 2013 at 12:46 AM CDT

Article source: http://www.waka.com/news/montgomery-news/Alabama-schools-look-at-severe-weather-preparations--208411881.html

The Oklahoma City suburb had been through it before. In May 1999, tornadoes ripped through the community, killing 36 people. This week’s tornado left at least 24 dead, including nine children, and destroyed two elementary schools. But teachers and other school officials are being hailed as heroes for responding just as they had during untold numbers of routine disaster drills over the years.

When Monday’s storm loomed, school officials “knew to treat it seriously,” says Ken Trump, a Cleveland-based national school-safety consultant. “When you have any loss of life, especially children, it rips our hearts out. But had the community not had that history, the preparedness lessons learned right in their own back yard, the losses could have been even worse.”

Moore Public Schools Superintendent Susan Pierce told reporters Tuesday that administrators at every school put the district’s crisis plan into action as soon as the district was warned of severe weather, and that the district holds more tornado drills each year than is required. “When it was time to shelter, we did just that,” she said. “When our children are at our schools, they are in our care.”

News reports throughout Tuesday repeated stories of schoolchildren who had been instructed to hold on to the walls or put backpacks over their heads as chairs and other debris flew overhead, and of teachers who shielded them, sometimes by lying on top of them.

Oklahoma has reinforced tornado shelters in hundreds of schools across the state, but the two that were hit this week, Plaza Towers Elementary and Briarwood Elementary, did not have them, emergency officials said Tuesday. Albert Ashwood, director of the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management, told reporters a shelter would not necessarily have saved more lives at the Plaza Towers, where seven children sheltering in above-ground classrooms were killed. He said each jurisdiction sets priorities for which schools will get limited funding for safe rooms. He says no disaster mitigation measure is absolute.

Schools present unique challenges because the population they serve is especially vulnerable. “We have the most precious commodity in the community concentrated in a very small area, and that’s our children,” says Chuck Hibbert, an Indiana-based national school safety consultant.

Ever since April 1999, when the Columbine High School shootings ushered in a new era of school safety, and especially since the Sandy Hook tragedy in December, “we’re finding that schools are rushing to look at how to strengthen their capabilities” to prevent disasters, and to respond when they do occur, says Victoria Calder, director of the Texas School Safety Center at Texas State University-San Marcos.

Nevertheless, state-level commitment is spotty. The center’s records show that 26 states have school safety centers, in many cases created by state law, that offer training and resources for safety concerns ranging from sexting to violence. Five states had such centers but have lost funding for them, and 19 states, including Oklahoma, have no such centers in place.

Much of the recent emphasis has been on bullying and mass shootings. Last month, for example, an Oklahoma commission created in the wake of the Sandy Hook shootings recommended to Gov. Mary Fallin that state law be amended to require “school intruder” drills, along with disaster drills for fires and tornadoes.

Emergency preparedness is “not an exact science,” but standard practices when tornadoes strike are still the best: Seek shelter in the safest place you can find, and hunker down, says Joe Wainscott,the recently retired head of Indiana’s office of homeland security who oversaw the response and recovery of a tornado last year in Henryville, Ind., that killed 13 people.

Trump says most schools in the nation would not need to go the extra step of building special storm shelters, “but it might make good sense in higher risk areas like Oklahoma or Kansas.”

Chuck Hibbert, an Indiana-based national school safety consultant, is not familiar with the schools in Moore, Okla., but says many newer schools around the country are vulnerable to disaster. “We have too many wide open expanses, too many large auditoriums, cafeterias, and large-group instruction areas. You don’t have to be any kind of engineer to understand that the larger the expanse of the roof the greater the chance of collapse,” he says. “We’ve built too many schools in this country for aesthetic viewing, and not for school safety or for emergency sheltering.”

Contributing: The Associated Press

Article source: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2013/05/22/safety-experts-oklahoma-school-tornado-shelter-preparedness/2349761/

A neighborhood in Elmore County was rocked when when one touched down there for just twenty-two seconds. Now, residents in that area give words of encouragement to those in Oklahoma.

“Yesterday brought back a lot of memories that we’ve tried to put behind us,” says resident Billy Myers.

Billy Myers owns the Myers Country Acres Mobile Home Park in Elmore County. On April 27, 2011 he says the neighborhood was completely leveled after a tornado touched down for less than 30 seconds. Myers tells us he lost both his sister-n-law and his niece in the storm and says he can relate to those in Oklahoma right now.

“I think most of them that lived were in shock just like we were,” he says. “If you haven’t been through something like that, its bad.”

Eloise Josey lives in the neighborhood and says her house and carport were completely destroyed. She says she believes those in Oklahoma may still be in shock.

“If their homes were destroyed and they also lost people, its a double,” says Josey. ”And they’re going to be in shock, they’re going to need people to come and stand with them.”

Four people from the neighbood were killed in the storm. After, some residents there built storm shelters for any future severe weather.

“We don’t turn anybody away because as long as one can pack in, then that’s the thing to do,” says Myers.

And residents here say they have some advice for those affected in Oklahoma…

“Just keep praying and have faith that no matter what happens, if you’re alive you can work your way out of it,” Josey says.

Article source: http://www.waka.com/news/montgomery-news/Myers-Mobile-Home-Park-Residents-Remember-2011-Tornado--208429381.html

Courtesy Angela Hornsby

Ja’Nae Hornsby, 9, (right) with her cousin Taylor, 14, in a photo taken over the weekend.

A 9-year-old girl who was “always smiling” is among the first of the Oklahoma tornado victims to be identified.

Third-grader Ja’Nae Hornsby was one of the students who perished when the twister demolished Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore, Okla. on Monday afternoon.

Members of her grieving family gathered Tuesday at a Baptist church in Oklahoma City to console each other after a night of anxious waiting ended with a hope-shattering call from the medical examiner’s office.

Her aunt, Angela Hornsby, said Ja’Nae had spent last weekend at her house, playing with her cousins and “doing what little girls do.”

“They like to play dress-up,” she recalled. “My daughter puts jewelry on them and I took pictures of them dancing together and they took video. They were just happy.

“She was always happy, always smiling.”

Courtesy Angela Hornsby

Ja’Nae Hornsby, 9, with her 2-year-old sister Jia, in a photo taken over the weekend.

On Monday, Ja’Nae went off to Plaza Towers Elementary School while her father, Joshua, headed into Oklahoma City for work.

As the tornado bore down on the suburb of Moore just before dismissal time, the father of two tried to race back home to get Ja’Nae from school and his two-year-old, Jia, from daycare, Angela Hornsby said.

The highways were jammed, though, and by the time he got to Moore, the grade school had been reduced to a pile of rubble, its parking lot transformed into a triage area for surviving students being pulled from the debris.

There was no sign of Ja’Nae, though. Her father and other relatives shuttled from shelter to shelter, “looking for answers,” Angela Hornsby said. She dialed all the hospitals that had taken the injured but could not find her niece.

As night fell, Joshua Hornsby went to St. Andrew’s United Methodist Church, where a dwindling number of parents waiting for reunions were camped out.

“He would not leave until he found out what happened to his baby,” his sister said. “They received a call while they were at the church this morning.

“My sister called to tell me. They were just sobbing.”

Joshua Hornsby also lost his house to the twister. His youngest child, who was picked up from daycare by her grandmother, survived.

Ja’Nae, whose mother died last year of lupus, had doted on her baby sister, family members said.

“She was a good big sister,” her aunt said, her voice cracking with emotion. “She was just a good girl.”

Pastor James Dorn Jr. of Mount Triumph Baptist Church said he had watched Ja’Nae grow up because her grandfather, Henry Hornsby, used to be the associate pastor there.

Like everyone else, he remembered her as full of joy.

“She was a beautiful child to be around, someone you feel privileged to know,” he said. “She did well in school. She was just awesome.”

Brian Williams will anchor a special primetime hour live from Oklahoma with reports from Lester Holt, Ann Curry, Harry Smith and Kate Snow. Tune in tonight to NBC at 8 p.m. ET/7 p.m. CT.

Article source: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/05/21/18402060-9-year-old-from-plaza-towers-school-among-first-tornado-victims-identified?lite

Deputies arrested Michael Vincent Boyer on harassing communications charges.

After getting our hands on the affidavit written by Sheriff D.T. Marshall, Alabama News Network learned there’s much more to this story.

Marshall’s affidavit says on Friday, surveillance video caught a man writing a racist remark on the bulletin board outside the purchasing office.

He says the video then showed the man walking outside the Courthouse Annex, and came back in to get a pistol permit. The sheriff says a flyer with language not suitable for some viewers was also found in the permit office.

Deputies say using the information on the pistol permit application, they found their suspect.

Marshall says all African American citizens in Montgomery County have been attacked. 

“It was on the newspaper stand. It hasn’t been used in several months,” says Deputy Archie Magger.

Magger says he also noticed another set of words in the same handwriting on this newspaper rack.

“The cleaning people tried to clean it off, but were unsuccessful,” he says. “I scratched it off with a knife. It’s just a shame that people, especially in Montgomery, are doing this type of thing.”

Montgomery County Commission Vice Chairman Dan Harris is appalled by the behavior.

“The only message from this commission would be that there’s zero-tolerance for this type of behavior,” says Harris.

We tried reaching Boyer. We went the address listed on the affidavit, but no one answered the door.

Deputies say they are not taking this case lightly.

“It does offend the public. That’s the last thing we want,” says Magger.

We have found an online bio written by who the sheriff believes to be Boyer. It says Boyer is a former reporter for the DailyCatholic and a book writer.  Boyer ends his bio by saying “he upholds the values, virtues and morals necessary to be loyal to God and His Holy Church.”

Boyer made bond Monday. Harassing communications is a misdemeanor. 

Article source: http://www.waka.com/news/montgomery-news/Mtgy-Co-Deputies-Man-Arrested-for-Writing-Racist-Remarks-on-Items-in-Courthouse-208397981.html

MOORE, Okla. Emergency crews searched the broken remnants of an Oklahoma City suburb Tuesday for survivors of a massive tornado that flattened homes and demolished an elementary school. At least 24 people were killed, including at least nine children, and those numbers were expected to climb.

79 Photos

Massive tornado hits Oklahoma

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Tornado aftermath: “It’s raining pieces of houses”

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Okla. tornado survivor finds dog buried alive under rubble

As the sun rose over the shattered community of Moore, the state medical examiner’s office cut the estimated death toll by more than half but warned that the number was likely to climb again.

Spokeswoman Amy Elliott said she believes some victims were counted twice in the early chaos of the storm that struck Monday afternoon. Downed communication lines and problems sharing information with officers exacerbated the problem, she said.

“It was a very eventful night,” Elliott said. “I truly expect that they’ll find more today.”

Authorities initially said as many as 51 people were dead, including 20 children.

Hospital officials say they’ve treated more than 200 patients, including dozens of children. About 20 patients remained at one hospital Tuesday, but it wasn’t clear how many patients remained hospitalized at another facility. Spokeswoman Brooke Cayot says Integris Southwest Medical Center has seen 90 patients, including five children who have been released. About 20 people remain hospitalized there.

OU Medical Center spokesman Scott Coppenbarger says 85 people, including 50 children, came to his hospital and an affiliated children’s hospital for treatment. He does not know how many have been released. Some 236 people were hurt, and that number was also expected to rise. It included some 50 children.

In Washington, President Barack Obama pledged urgent government help for Oklahoma Tuesday in the wake of “one of the most destructive” storms in the nation’s history.

“In an instant neighborhoods were destroyed, dozens of people lost their lives, many more were injured,” Obama said from the White House State Dining Room. “Among the victims were young children trying to take shelter in the safest place they knew – their school.”

• How to help those hit by Oklahoma tornado
• More severe weather expected after monster tornado
• Obama: “Full focus” is on recovery from Oklahoma tornado

The president added that the town of Moore “needs to get everything it needs right away.”

The path of Monday’s tornado in Moore County, Oklahoma

/

CBS News

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla, said: “I spoke with Department of Homeland Secretary Janet Napolitano last night about FEMA’s response. We still don’t know the scope of devastation and won’t for some time. As the ranking member of Senate committee that oversees FEMA, I can assure Oklahomans that any and all available aid will be delivered without delay.”

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Couple hiding in bathtub saved by Okla. first responders

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Frmr. Okla. gov: Need to reconsider our “shelter-in-place” protocol

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Moore mayor: Six neighborhoods now “nothing but slabs”

The ferocious storm — less than 1 percent of all tornadoes reach such wind speeds — ripped through the suburb of Moore in the Midwest region known as Tornado Alley. Severe weather warnings were posted in much of the region Tuesday morning.

The storm laid waste to scores of buildings in Moore, a community of 41,000 people about 10 miles south of Oklahoma City. Block after block lay in ruins. Homes were crushed into piles of broken wood. Cars and trucks were left crumpled on the roadside. Rescuers launched a desperate rescue effort at two elementary schools, pulling children from heaps of debris and carrying them to a triage center.

New search-and-rescue teams moved at dawn Tuesday, taking over from the 200 or so emergency responders who worked all night. A helicopter shined a spotlight from above to aid in the search.

Fire Chief Gary Bird said fresh teams would search the whole community at least two more times to ensure that no survivors — or any of the dead — were overlooked. Crews painted an `X’ on each structure to note it had been checked.

“That is to confirm we have done our due diligence for this city, for our citizens,” Bird said.

The community of 56,000 people, 10 miles south of Oklahoma City, braced for another long, harrowing day.

“As long as we are here … we are going to hold out hope that we will find survivors,” said Trooper Betsy Randolph, a spokeswoman for the Oklahoma Highway Patrol.

More than 200 people had been treated at area hospitals.

Other search-and-rescue teams focused their efforts at Plaza Towers Elementary, where the storm ripped off the roof, knocked down walls and turned the playground into a mass of twisted plastic and metal as students and teachers huddled in hallways and bathrooms.

Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin said she watched up close late Monday as rescuers tried to find people in the wreckage of the school.

“It was an incredible sight to see how big the debris field was and how much destruction there was,” Fallin said. “It would be remarkable for anyone to survive.”

18 Photos

Children rescued from two elementary schools in Oklahoma

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School children among Okla. tornado casualties

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Oklahoma mom on destroyed school: Parents’ worst nightmare

Seven of the nine dead children were killed at the school, but several students were pulled alive from under a collapsed wall and other heaps of mangled debris. Rescue workers passed the survivors down a human chain of parents and neighborhood volunteers. Parents carried children in their arms to a triage center in the parking lot. Some students looked dazed, others terrified.

Officials were still trying to account for a handful of children not found at the school who may have gone home early with their parents, Bird said Tuesday.

Many parents of missing schoolchildren initially came to St. Andrews United Methodist Church, which had been set up as a meeting site. But only high school students were brought to the church, causing confusion and frustration among parents of students enrolled at Plaza Towers. They were redirected to a Baptist church several miles away.

“It was very emotional — some people just holding on to each other, crying because they couldn’t find a child; some people being angry and expressing it verbally” by shouting at one another, said D.A. Bennett, senior pastor at St. Andrews.

After hearing that the tornado was headed toward another school called Briarwood Elementary, David Wheeler left work and drove 100 mph through blinding rain and gusting wind to find his 8-year-old son, Gabriel. When he got to the school site, “it was like the earth was wiped clean, like the grass was just sheared off,” Wheeler said.

Eventually, he found Gabriel, sitting with the teacher who had protected him. His back was cut and bruised and gravel was embedded in his head — but he was alive. As the tornado approached, students at Briarwood were initially sent to the halls, but a third-grade teacher — whom Wheeler identified as Julie Simon — thought it didn’t look safe and so ushered the children into a closet, he said.

The teacher shielded Gabriel with her arms and held him down as the tornado collapsed the roof and starting lifting students upward with a pull so strong that it sucked the glasses off their faces, Wheeler said.

“She saved their lives by putting them in a closet and holding their heads down,” Wheeler said.

The tornado also grazed a theater, and leveled countless homes. Authorities were still trying to determine the full scope of the damage.

Roofs were torn off houses, exposing metal rods left twisted like pretzels. Cars sat in heaps, crumpled and sprayed with caked-on mud. Insulation and siding was smashed up against the sides of any walls that remained standing. Yards were littered with pieces of wood, nails and pieces of electric poles.

Article source: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57585423/oklahoma-tornado-leaves-dozens-dead-including-many-children/

Heath Harding gets his Masters degree hood ready for Troy University- Montgomery’s graduation. 
As you can imagine, at only 17, he’s gotten a lot of attention from his older classmates.

“There’s been a lot of humorous interactions with people and a lot of funny nicknames, but all have been positive,” said Heath.

But he doesn’t like to take the credit for being so smart.

“I don’t think I’m a genius per se. I think I’ve been blessed in a great environment to learn in. I think maybe I have an IQ above average, but I think a lot of hard work goes a long way,” said Heath.

Hard work that his parents instilled in all of their ten homeschooled children.
And believe it or not, so far they have all started college before the age of 12.
For the Hardings, education is a way of life.

“We believe age segregation is wrong for school children, so we are trying to be at the forefront of that movement. Teaching people that kids can really do some amazing things,” said Heath’s dad, Kip.

“You can’t just look at their age and decide that’s what grade they are in. You need to look at their abilities and their maturity and may be they are ready to do more regardless of their age,” said Heath’s mom, Mona Lisa.

What does heath plan to do with his Masters of computer science degree?

“My heart is with education and with helping people become computer literate especially among children and older adults. I also love world missions, so definitely thinking about that,” said Heath.

One of Heath’s sisters just graduated with her doctorate Sunday making her the youngest female physician in the country… at the age of 22.
 

To learn more about the Hardings, click here.

Article source: http://www.waka.com/news/montgomery-news/Troy-University--Montgomery-Grad-Youngest-on-Record-208252521.html

Sue Ogrocki / AP

A monster tornado hit Moore, Okla., Monday afternoon, leaving scores dead as the threat for more storms continues.

Launch slideshow

Rescue teams combed through pulverized buildings and splintered homes early Tuesday after one of the deadliest tornadoes in U.S. history blasted through the suburbs of Oklahoma City, killing at least 51 people — including 20 children.

Officials warned that the death toll from Monday’s mid-afternoon twister was almost certain to rise significantly when dawn broke in the devastated city of Moore, and as more bodies were taken to the medical examiner.

Children were among the many missing after the tornado delivered a direct hit to two elementary schools. Seven children drowned in a pool of water at Plaza Towers Elementary School, which was all but leveled.

“It is going to go higher,” Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., said Tuesday morning on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” of the death toll.

Severe weather remained a threat, with early morning storms expected to lash areas where workers were cleaning up. Lightning flashed in the sky over Moore, and forecasters warned that more “large and devastating” tornadoes were possible, with large cities in Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas also at risk.

Rescuers walked through mile after mile of obliterated homes, listening for voices calling out from the wreckage.

 “The whole city looks like a debris field,” said Moore Mayor Glenn Lewis.

At one hospital, 85 patients, including 65 children, were being treated for minor to critical injuries.

“We thought we died because we were inside the cellar door. … It ripped open the door and just glass and debris started slamming on us and we thought we were dead to be honest,” survivor Ricky Stover said while surveying the devastated remains of his home.

At the city’s St. Andrews United Methodist Church, parents listened as the names of surviving children were read out through a bullhorn Monday night, The Associated Press reported. While some families hugged each other as they were reunited, others were left to wait, fearing the worst as the night dragged on.

“As long as we are here … we are going to hold out hope that we will find survivors,” Trooper Betsy Randolph, a spokeswoman for the Oklahoma Highway Patrol, told Reuters.

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.

Monday’s tornado tore the roof off the elementary school about 3 p.m. local time. A teacher told NBC station KFOR that she draped herself on top of six children in a bathroom to shelter them.

It was not clear how many children still were missing. Students in fourth, fifth and sixth grade were evacuated to a church, but students in lower grades had sheltered in place, KFOR reported. More than two hours after the tornado struck, several children were pulled out alive.

The twister was a mile wide at its base, according to The Weather Channel. A reporter for KFOR said the tornado kicked up a cloud of debris perhaps two miles wide. The National Weather Service initially classified the storm as an EF4, the second-strongest type, with winds of 166 to 200 mph.

 “I lost everything,” one man said as he walked through the ruins of a horse farm. “We might have one horse left out of all of them.”

President Barack Obama declared a major disaster, making federal aid available to people in five counties. He planned a statement from the White House later Tuesday morning, a White House official said.

Gov. Mary Fallin asked the people of Oklahoma for patience and promised: “We will bring every single resource out that we can.”

Relief efforts sprang up. The Red Cross said it was opening a shelter, and the University of Oklahoma opened some of its housing for displaced families.

In addition to Plaza Towers, Briarwood Elementary School was heavily damaged, KFOR reported.

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.

Joplin city officials said Monday they were sending a team of 10 officers and three firefighters to Moore to help. “Giving back in whatever way we can,” the mayor said on Twitter.

The tornado Monday also came one day after another cluster of storms in Oklahoma that killed two elderly men in the town of Shawnee. Tens of millions of people from Texas to the Great Lakes — an area covering 55 million people — had been warned to brace for the severe weather.

More on the Oklahoma tornado:

‘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

Watch live video of storms from KFOR

NBC News’ Jeff Black, Tracy Connor and Kristen Welker contributed to this report.

This story was originally published on Tue May 21, 2013 6:14 AM EDT

Article source: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/05/21/18394047-20-children-among-at-least-51-killed-by-vast-oklahoma-tornado?lite

A Democrat doesn’t hold a single statewide office. As Alabama News Network has reported, there are reports of theft at their party headquarters in Montgomery, and the party is over 500 thousand dollars in debt.

So, With 2014 being an election year, are Alabama democrats concerned with the party’s future?

Alabama Democratic Party Chair Nancy Worley told Alabama News Network last week that the party was in deep financial trouble.

“The gas company came first,” says Worley. ”They left us a tag telling us the gas had been turned off. Then a day or so later the water company left us a tag. Then last week, it was the power company that called.”

Worley tells us the party has more than 500 thousand dollars worth of debt. And now, some democrats say something must be done. Senator Hank Sanders tells us the problems within the party are troubling.

“I’m concerned about the debt,” he says. ”I’m concerned about the division. It [the party] is in a deep struggle.”

Senator Quinton Ross says he isn’t as concerned with the mounting debt, saying the democratic party will use election season to recruit some of the money that’s outstanding. Ross says he doesn’t believe the debt will hurt democrats in the 2014 races.

“It’s not an uncommon problem to political parties but I really don’t see it having a bearing on how democrats throughout the state to pull together for the upcoming elections.”

Ross says competing against republicans with more money doesn’t necessarily mean that democrats won’t see success.

“They always have endless money and if money voted, they would always win elections but they don’t.”

However, Sanders disagrees saying the state of the party will hurt upcoming elections.

“I don’t think that the current democratic party can compete very well,” Sanders explains. ”We’ve got a year to whip it into shape. Some people have to talk, some people have to compromise, some people have to put the broader interest of the state above their own individual interest.”

Article source: http://www.waka.com/news/montgomery-news/Alabama-Senate-Democrats-Talk-Party-Debt-Look-to-2014-208244421.html