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Monday, May 20, 2013 9:01 PM UTC

AP: Toll at least 37 dead in Okla. tornado

Several live children have been pulled from the rubble of a destroyed elementary school, SLIDESHOW SLIDE SHOW

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Topics: slideshow, tornado, Oklahoma, Natural disaster, Moore, Okla., School, Plaza towers, Plaza Towers Elementary School,

AP: Toll at least 37 dead in Okla. tornado (Credit: CNN)

Updated 8:30 p.m. ET:

The AP has reported that at least 37 people were killed by the tornado, with the toll expected to rise.

Updated 8:22 p.m. ET:

Salon is on gchat with Yadi Ruelas, 38, of Midwest City, Okla., a suburb near Moore, where the tornado hit today. She says the hail has stopped and the weather has cleared. Earlier in the day she picked up her children at school in Oklahoma City.

When she went to pick up her son, families from Moore were staying at the school because they couldn’t return to their homes. Storm alarms were sounding around the city. “We moved here from California and we aren’t used to tornadoes. It’s so sad to see what has happened today and how quick everything is just gone,” she wrote. She regularly goes to a shopping center that was destroyed.

She says the news is announcing which hospitals children have been taken to.

Updated 7:46 p.m. ET:

A live feed from KFOR on the scene:

 

Updated 7:28 p.m. ET:

Seventy five children were in the elementary school when the tornado hit, CNN reported. While the toll in property is devastating the death and injury count remains a big question mark. More from CNN:

Lando Hite, shirtless and spattered in mud, told KFOR about the storm hitting the Orr Family Farm in Moore, which had about 80 horses.

“It was just like the movie ‘Twister,’” he said, standing amid the debris. “There were horses and stuff flying around everywhere.”

Updated 7:12 p.m. ET: AP:

MOORE, Okla. (AP) — Several children pulled out of rubble alive at Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore, Okla.

 

Updated 7:08 p.m. ET: A Dallas CBS affiliate reported that the tornado had also hit a hospital in Moore, Okla. It was being evacuated.

 

Updated 7:03 p.m. ET: The tornado in Moore, Okla., an Oklahoma City suburb reportedly made a “direct hit” on an elementary school but injury and death reports were not yet available. According to the Associated Press:

…the storm laid waste to scores of buildings in Moore, south of the city. Block after block of the community lay in ruins, with heaps of debris piled up where homes used to be. Cars and trucks were left crumpled on the roadside.

 

 

 

A tornado estimated to be between one and two miles wide has landed in the Oklahoma City area, prompting a tornado emergency by the National Weather Service. CNN affliate KFOR estimates that more than 171,000 people are in the path of the storm.

“It’s just destroying everything. There’s so many homes in the air right now. The motion on this storm is sickening,” said storm chaser Spencer Basoco.

A large chunk of the Midwest remains on high alert as tornadoes are expected to pass through Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas and Texas.

Tornadoes hit midwest

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  • Moore, Oklahoma (via KWTV, Derrick Weber)

  • A fire breaks out in a demolished building in Moore, Oklahoma (NBC News)

  • Rescue teams are looking for children and school staff who may still be trapped-- an estimated 75 children and school staff took cover in a shelter in the Plaza Towers Elementary School that was hit by the tornado on Monday afternoon.

  • The wreckage near Oklahoma City, via NBC News

  • Television footage shows flattened buildings and fires after a mile-wide tornado moved through the Oklahoma City area. (AP Photo/Courtesy KWTV)

  • A comparison of the current tornado path (red) to the one that killed 36 people in 1999ABC News

  • Footage of the tornado in Oklahoma City, estimated to be two miles wide at one point, via CNN

  • From Dan Gordon's Twitter: "A picture a friend sent leaving Moore. He is okay."

  • Leah Hill (L), of Shawnee, Oklahoma, is hugged by friend Sidney Sizemore, as they look through Hill's scattered belongings from her destroyed home, west of Shawnee, Oklahoma May 19, 2013. (Reuters/Bill Waugh)

  • A semi-tractor trailer (top) rests on its side against the guard rails on Interstate 40 as another trailer lies broken open on the road below after falling from I-40, following a tornado strike near Highway 177 north of Shawnee, Oklahoma May 19, 2013. (Reuters/Bill Waugh)

  • A destroyed truck being blown off the 40 freeway is pictured with its damaged cargo after a tornado swept through Shawnee, Okla., May 19, 2013. A massive storm front swept north through the central United States on Sunday, hammering the region with fist-sized hail, blinding rain and tornadoes, including a half-mile wide twister. (Reuters/Gene Blevins)

  • Maeghan Hadley, of One Day Ranch pet rescue, checks over a kitten pulled from under the rubble of a mobile home destroyed by Sunday's tornado in the Steelman Estates Mobile Home Park, near Shawnee, Okla. (AP/Sue Ogrocki)

  • Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin, right, walks through the Steelman Estates Mobile Home Park, which was hard hit in Sunday's tornado, with Albert Ashwood, left, Director of the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management, near Shawnee, Okla., Monday, May 20, 2013. (AP/ Sue Ogrocki)

  • A damaged mobile home is pictured amid the debris after a tornado swept through Shawnee, in Oklahoma May 19, 2013. (Reuters/Gene Blevins)

  • Storm chasers get close to a tornadic thunderstorm, one of several tornadoes that touched down, in South Haven, Kansas, May 19, 2013.(Reuters/Gene Blevins)

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