A massive tornado that swept through portions of Oklahoma yesterday has claimed dozens of lives with the death toll expected to rise.
KFOR in Oklahoma City is reporting that officials have now confirmed at least 24 dead and 233 injured by an historic tornado that nearly obliterated the Oklahoma City suburb town of Moore yesterday.
The National Weather Service issued an initial finding that the tornado was an EF-4 on the enhanced Fujita scale, the second most-powerful type of twister.
As of this writing, the tornado, which at times was over a mile wide, also killed an unconfirmed number of children at Plaza Towers Elementary in Moore. Search and rescue personnel say the children were hunkered down in a hallway when the tornado made a direct hit on the school, tearing off the roof and sending it crashing down on the children. Burst water pipes are said to have drowned some of the victims who were pulled from the rubble last night.
Other victims included a family four with a baby who tried to take shelter in a freezer when the tornado struck. There were no survivors.
Meanwhile, survivors are crowding into local hospitals in search of missing loved ones.
“Wait, that’s all we can do is wait,” Mark Troxell told KFOR yesterday.
The youngest of nine, Troxell is searching for his older brother Mark who was caught in the middle of the storm and hasn’t been heard from since.
“What I heard is he was opening the front door and then his house blew away,” Troxell said.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has announced that federal disaster aid has been made available to the State of Oklahoma to supplement state recovery efforts in all areas affected by storms that struck the area beginning on May 18.
Local churches have set up shelters for homeless families and the Red Cross is in the area dispensing aid.
Anyone wishing to help victims is asked to make a donation to the American Red Cross by visiting to www.redcross.org/okc or www.redcross.org or texting REDCROSS to 90999 to make a $10 donation.
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