the agonizing recovery efforts there offer a glimpse of what joplin is now up against. cnn's david mattingly joins us live from tusk tuscaloosa with a preview. >> reporter: people in joplin can see their futures. there have been significant steps forward. streets are now clear. the water is back on. and electricity is being restored to neighborhoods by the day. there are also significant things to point out like the house behind me. there are very large areas where it looks like the tornado just hit yesterday. i had a long conversation with the mayor of tuscaloosa and he tells me the time has come for a lot of tough decisions to be made by individuals on what they're going to do and the city has some tough decisions to make as well. >> we've moved 300,000 cubic yards but when you go around tuscaloosa it looks like we were hit by this tornado yesterday.