After a giant mile-wide tornado swept through and devastated Moore, Okla., the densely populared suburb of Oklahoma City, the bodies of seven school children were found drowned in a pool of water beneath the flattened Plaza Towers Elementary School, and 24 more missing students are feared to have met the same fate, according to the Washington Times.
The mile-wide tornado ripped through the city of Moore yesterday, leveling buildings, flattening cars and homes and killing a confirmed total of 51 people so far, 20 of those children, including the seven recovered from the school, according to KWTV. One of the leveled buildings was Plaza Towers Elementary School, where students were in class while the tornado with 200 mph winds spent nearly an hour on the ground.
Parents rushed frantically to the school, which had been directly hit by the massive storm, and families were later taken to a nearby church to await the news of their children, according to the Daily Mail.
About 80 National Guard members were deployed at the elementary school, including first responders with rescue dogs to help search for the missing children through the debris. Jackhammers, sledgehammers and National Guard choppers that detect body heat were being used in the digging and searching.
A sixth grade boy named Brady told KOCO-TV in Oklahoma City that "he and other students took cover in a bathroom" at school while at the twister hit. "Cinderblocks and everything collapsed on them but they were underneath so that kind of saved them a little bit, but I mean they were trapped in there," he said. Yesterday afternoon, third graders were pulled from the wreckage as "as rescue workers passed the children down a human chain before taking them to a triage center set up in the school's parking lot."
One teacher said she laid down on top of six children to protect them during the tornado, and it is believed that another teacher put her life at risk to cover three students with her body, resulting in her suffering serious injuries.
Residents of Moore were given only 30 minutes of warning time when the twister touched down on the south side of Moore. The tornado was said to have been more than a half-mile in width with a two-to-two-and-one-half mile debris field whipping around the funnel," and was classified as a "wedge" due to its wide base, and recorded as "an EF-4 on the Fujita scale, the second most powerful type of twister," turning the town into debris in its wake.
"It seems that our worst fears have happened today," said Bill Bunting, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Norman, Okla.
"The whole city looks like a debris field," Mayor Glenn Lewis of the city of Moore said to NBC News. During the twister, students in the 4th, 5th, and 6th grades were evacuated to a church, but "students in lower grades had sheltered in place, KFOR reported." After more than two hours after the twister struck the city, several children were pulled out alive from the destruction.
"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," Mike Booth, the sheriff of Pottawatomie County, Okla., said to The Associated Press. "It looks like there's been heavy equipment in there on a demolition tour."
Poor cell phone reception due to knocked down landlines and cell phone traffic made reception more difficult for families frantic to get in contact with their loved ones, but a website called Safeandwell.com has been of assistance to those who cannot contact relatives by cell phone.
Oklahoma governor Mary Fallin said that Oklahomans should "stay away and let the our search and rescue teams and families get in there."
Click here to see a slideshow of the ravaged Oklahoma town, including pictures of children being rescued, and here to see additional photos of the tragedy's aftermath.
