Witnesses describe deadly Oklahoma tornado: ‘All you could hear were screams’

The hell he saw was harrowing, but it’s the sounds at Plaza Towers Elementary that Stuart Earnest Jr. says will haunt him forever.

“All you could hear were screams,” Earnest said. “The people screaming for help. And the people trying to help were also screaming.”

Plaza Towers, a pre-kindergarten through sixth-grade school, took a direct hit when a titanic tornado chewed a deadly and destructive 20-mile path through Newcastle, Moore and parts of southern Oklahoma City for 40 minutes Monday afternoon.

State officials have adjusted the number of casualties a few times since the tragedy. Tuesday morning, Amy Elliott, chief administrative officer at the Oklahoma City Medical Examiner’s Office, said that the death toll had been reduced to 24 for now, including 9 children. Seven of those children died at the school.

Elliott said believed the deaths had been double counted earlier, leading to an inaccurate death toll of nearly 50. “It could conceivably rise,” Elliott said.

KFOR reported that at least 233 people were injured by the storm.

”Not to be pessimistic… but we think the death toll will continue to climb as we find more bodies,” Lt. Gov. Todd Lamb said on CNN Tuesday morning.

Mother Nature was showing no mercy to Moore on Tuesday. Drenching rains and lightning had moved into the area by 9 a.m. Forecasters weren’t predicting tornadoes, but said hail and damaging winds were possible through late afternoon.

President Barack Obama said FEMA officials and staff were on the ground in the area, and that the federal government would help with the disaster response. ”The people of Moore should know that their country will remain on the ground there for them, beside them, as long as it takes for their homes and schools to rebuild, businesses and hospitals to reopen, the parents to console, the first responders to comfort and of course frightened children who will need our continued love and attention,” Obama said Tuesday morning at a press conference.

Classes were still in session at Plaza Towers when the twister, estimated to be packing winds of 200 mph or greater, crushed nearly every corner of the school. Teachers’ cars were thrown into the building, and the playground no longer exists.

“I can only hope those little kids killed didn’t suffer,” said Earnest, one of many who rushed to the school to help survivors.

With several students still unaccounted for, rescuers worked overnight digging through the rubble.

“I just hope they find her,” Shannon Galarneau said of her 10-year-old niece, a Plaza Towers student who was missing as of early Tuesday morning. “You just feel helpless.”

The girl’s younger sister, also a student at the school, suffered cuts to her head and bruises on her back. The 8-year-old was still wearing her hospital bracelet while asleep on her grandmother’s shoulder in the front seat of a pickup truck just after midnight.

“She said it was probably the scariest day of her life,” Galarneau said.

The child was among more than 230 reportedly injured by the tornado, which some estimated to be greater than a mile wide at times. Its path was nearly identical to the one taken by a record-breaking May 1999 tornado that devastated the area.

Galarneau and her husband could see the twister a mile and a half from their front porch and scrambled to hide.

“It barreled down fast,” said Galarneau, who found refuge in a utility closet.

President Barack Obama declared several Oklahoma counties disaster areas and pledged to support the area’s rescue and recovery. The funnel’s fury crumbled homes for several blocks around the school and in other parts of Moore. Missing street signs and other landmarks made some neighborhoods unrecognizable even to locals.

“It is a barren wasteland,” Galarneau said. “Everything is leveled.”

Allen and JoAnn Anderson huddled under quilts and pillows in their bathtub with their Yorkie, Magand, and cat, Meow, when the tornado came down their street.

“It was like standing in the middle of a train track and having the train go right over you,” said Allen, 63.

They emerged from the tub 15 minutes later to find their brick house gone and cars badly damaged.

“There’s no house. It’s just a pile of rubble,” Allen said.

The couple checked into a motel with their pets late Monday. Chunks of attic insulation were still stuck in JoAnn’s sandy-blond hair, and her legs were partially caked in dried mud.

“It could be worse,” JoAnn said. “We’re alive.”

By Jason Sickles and Liz Goodwin

In tornado’s wake, worried parents seek out kids

The parents and guardians stood in the muddy grass outside a suburban Oklahoma City church, listening as someone with a bullhorn called out the names of children who were being dropped off — survivors of a deadly tornado that barreled through their community.

For many families, the ordeal ended in bear hugs and tears of joy as loved ones reunited. Others were left to wait in the darkness, hoping for good news while fearing the worst.

At least seven children are among the 24 reported dead so far in Moore, the Oklahoma City suburb ravaged by Monday’s tornado that packed winds of up to 200 mph. The twister reduced one elementary school to a heaping mound of rubble and heavily damaged another while also flattening block after block of homes. Officials earlier said more than 50 people had died, including 20 children. The medical examiner’s office revised that death toll Tuesday morning, saying some victims were maybe counted twice in the initial confusion after the storm.

At St. Andrews United Methodist Church, parents stared into the distance as they waited, some holding the hands of young children who were missing siblings.

Tonya Sharp and Deanna Wallace sat at a table in the church’s gymnasium waiting for their teenage daughters. As Sharp and Wallace spoke, a line of students walked in.

Wallace spotted her 16-year-old daughter, who came quickly her way and jumped into her mother’s arms, pushing her several steps backward in the process. But Sharp didn’t see her daughter, a 17-year-old who has epilepsy. She worried her daughter hadn’t taken her medicine.

”I don’t know where she’s at,” Sharp said. Later, she went to speak to officials who helped her register so she could be notified as soon as her daughter was found.

Shelli Smith had to walk miles to find her children. She was reunited with her 14-year-old daughter, Tiauna, around 5 p.m. Monday, but hadn’t yet seen her 16-year-old son, TJ, since he left for school that morning.

TJ’s phone had died, but he borrowed a classmate’s phone to tell his mother where he was. However, Smith couldn’t get to him due to the roadblocks. So she parked her car and started walking.

It took her three hours, but a little after sunset, she found him. She grabbed her son and squeezed him in a tight hug that lasted for several seconds before letting go. TJ hugged his sister, and then hugged his mom again.

The family had a long walk back to their car and then home, but she said she didn’t mind.

”I was trying to get him and they wouldn’t let me,” she said, adding later: ”I was like, ’You know what? I’m going to get my son.’”

Renee Lee summed up the struggle for many parents with multiple children — find the ones who they hadn’t yet seen, while calming the younger ones they had with them.

Lee is the mother of two daughters Sydney Walker, 16, and Hannah Lee, 8. When the storm came, she tried to pick Sydney up from school. Sydney told her on the phone that they wouldn’t let her come in. While Lee and her younger daughter waited in their home, which wasn’t hit, Sydney was safe in the room at a local high school.

Lee said she believed Sydney wasn’t hurt and seemed resigned to the severe weather outbreaks.

”There’s been so many of them, it doesn’t even faze me,” she said. ”You just do what you gotta do. It’s part of living here.”

By NOMAAN MERCHANT

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14-Year-Old Girl Shot And Killed While Riding The Bus In Queens

A 14-year-old girl was tragically and senselessly murdered on Saturday in Queens, after an unidentified shooter emptied 10 shots at an idling Q6 bus.

Daja Robinson was simply sitting in her seat when her bus was barraged by bullets, one bursting through a window and hitting her in the head. Robinson was rushed to Jamaica Hospital, but it was simply too late.

The bus was cordoned off by NYPD and investigated for ballistic evidence, as it remained on the corner throughout the night.

Witnesses say they saw a group of teens following Robinson before she got on the bus, right before shots were fired at the bus. Jamaica resident Jamaal Jefferson knew the teen girl, telling the NY Daily News, ”She was sweet. She was young…she was going to school, living her life. It’s just a tragedy.”

Neighborhood resident Christopher McIlwain had maybe the most appropriate response to the tragedy out of anyone. He told reporters, ”It’s outrageous. First of all, it was a young girl. Secondly, it was useless. A life wasted for what?”

Source: nydailynews.com.feedsportal.com

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