0 wow, that's what it looked like as these tornadoes rushed through as many as five twisters hit oklahoma. you see cars speeding down the road, the debris flying everywhere out of a total of 17 that were reported, that number from the national weather service. watch that bale of hay slam into the car. 17 is the number from the national weather service across the midwest. >> two of the towns in the path of the storm el reno and union city, five deaths blamed on the storm including a mother and small child. at least 70 others were injured but that may not be all. >> a number of casualties will probably go up, we expect that to go up in the next 24 hours, hopefully not very much, hopefully not at all but it certainly appears that it may. >> and right now, flooding is a major concern. the storms brought more than ten inches of rain in some areas. we have team coverage across the damage zone. george howell is in union city, oklahoma, ed valencia is in el reno. george let's begin with you. it's been daylight for about an hour, set the scene for us, what are you seeing now as opposed to when you were sitting there in the dark. >> reporter: alison, okay, so union city just west of oklahoma city, this is where the storm system first started to develop, first started to drop those tornadoes, and this is where we are now seeing the result of what those twisters did here just south of union city, in this neighborhood where i can count what used to be one, two, three, perhaps maybe four homes that were standing. they're gone now and you see this debris field all over this area. i want to go back to this house though that we've been talking about all morning, chris merritt over here is being interviewed by one of our local affiliates but he tells the story his parents lived at that house. he says that he called his parents, told them you need to get out of the way. he said he saw circulation watching one of the affiliate's coverage, saw circulation in a storm near this house. they left and went to a nearby fire station. alison, they came back to this house and when they came back to see what happened here, they looked up in the sky and they saw yet another tornado so they had to get out of the way again. people really had a matter of minutes to move and take shelter, whether you shelter in place, whether you go underground or whether you take time in advance of a warning to get on the road and go, people definitely got out of the way of this storm. what we're feeling right now is very different than what we felt just you know, 12 hours ago. the other day it was muggy. it was humid. now we're starting, it's cold this morning. the winds have picked up and you can see the clouds right now, the clouds quite a difference, what a difference a day makes. one of our affiliates have their helicopter overhead assessing the damage here. this really is where all of this started to develop, it blossomed and when you go into the oklahoma city area, that's where the storm parked itself, and just dumped a lot of rain. flooding is an issue there. >> what about now daylight here, are officials on the scene yet to really survey the damage? do you see any efforts to restore power? >> reporter: right, well you know, just maybe 15 minutes ago i saw what seemed to be a truck, you know, someone going through this street surveying the damage. if we pan over here a power pole down, look at that. this is what you see all over the place, these downed power lines, downed power poles, trees that are down in some places so yeah we saw someone that seeme to be looking at that. also we are seeing people drive down this street to start looking at their homes, you know, so this is really a time where people are getting to see the extent of the damage caused by these storms. >> george howell, thank you. let's go to el reno, where nick valencia is this morning. you described mangled metal there where you are. tell us what more you see. >> reporter: yes, check this out, victor, this looks like it was positioned at some point on top of the roof of the canadian valley technical center. looks like an air conditioning unit, just as the sun has come up these are some images we're starting to see. it's scary, what makes things like this all the more dangerous is flying debris like this, this is a piece of metal, very sharp piece of metal just part of the debris strewn across all around this technical valley center but check this out, victor, look in the distance there and you see it's really more of a rural community compared to where our george howell is. in this part of town in el reno, 25 miles west of oklahoma city that's sort of the good news in here is a lot of empty fields, a lot of open space, we can count about, including the structure that we're standing in front of just two other structures that appear to have either partial or complete damage to their facilities. we actually spoke to the sheriff's office just a little while ago. they said they're going to update us on the latest information, they've now scheduled a press conference in front of the sheriff's office at 10:00 a.m. local, 11:00 a.m. eastern. no details as to what we will hear there. we haven't been able to speak to many residents around the community just yet. people just now starting to wake up, people were encouraged to get underground or get out of town in this area but at least from the sheriff's office, sheriffs that we've spoken to, they say that the more detail, more information will come in the next hour or two, but that's really about it. that's about all we have out here. lots of debris, lots of debris around here but no real major significant structural damage. victor? >> nick valencia in el reno for us, thank you. oklahoma city, the will rogers world airport there is open but there are no flights headed in either direction and it's expected to stay that way for the rest of the morning. earlier i spoke with the airport spokesperson who told me about how they handled the storm. >> as we began watching this, we knew it was going to be difficult because again on a friday afternoon the busiest time of the week, lots of people traveling, but as it started to move, we just had to make the decision to keep people safe and while we did not get a direct hit by a tornado, certainly we had high winds of about 80 miles an hour is what i've been told and you know, we're just grateful we were able to get everybody down there. also we had a lot of people, the airport sets on a main street, that is filled with restaurants and hotels and so we had a lot of people that, on that street that also came to the airport to shelter in place in our tunnel so we had probably about 1,500 people in our tunnel. >> and now to arkansas where crews are resuming their search for three missing people after flash flooding hit the area. raging floodwaters began rising around a home in scott county, two women inside called for help. sheriff cody carpenter and a wildlife official tried reaching them in a boat but they got swept away. sheriff carpenter's body has been found. last hour we spoke to keith stevens about the new search. >> the area saw about eight inches of rain in a very short period of time. that area is in a valley and the water obvious ly rushing throug the state ran through the mill creek area and flooded the little community of white city. >> authorities are continuing their search for the women and the other official. thousands of people in the midwest are in the dark this morning, power is out for more than 212,000 homes and businesses. look at the breakdown, missouri, t 89,000 customers, illinois has more than 31,000. arkansas has more than 3,000 without power and there are more than 1,000 outages in kansas. indiana was also hit, it has about 500 people or households without power. so much of the great video comes from storm chasers. these are the people who drive toward the storm instead of seeking shelter and driving away from it like everybody else. brandon sullivan is one of them and this is what he and his team ran into in union city, oklahoma. >> oh my goodness. oh my goodness. oh, no. man, three tornadoes. continuous vortices, continuous vortices here. turn the car around! let's get ready! >> go! >> fast as you can! it's on the right. go! go now! hurry! 40 is not enough!