school. [ screaming ] reporter: that s the sound of the terrifying moments when the tornado hit. lynn and jessica are still shaken. their voices still quiver when they talk about it. monday afternoon when this massive tornado struck, they huddled with 25 kids inside a bathroom at briarwood elementary school. she says she covered two kids with her body and kept thinking don t let me die. just let me get the babies out of here. reporter: as the roof came off, listen to the audio recording on her cell phone of horrified kids. brentian trying to reassure them. [ screaming ] stay down! stay down! you re okay. you re okay.
we try to get answers to that question. thank you so much to john. and there are parents asking serious questions tonight, too, including this mother whose child was killed. there should be a place that if this ever happened again during school that kids can get to a safe place. we don t have to sit there and go through rubble and rubble and rubble and may not ever find what we re looking for. senator tom coburn joins me now. obviously that mother and her grief, pointing out what other mothers are, too. that they feel there should have been a shelter. that would have made a difference. do you think it would have? well, nobody knows. you know, some of the shelters that were utilized, collapsed, or were destroyed by the tornado. the point is those are decision that s need to be made at the local and state level, not at the federal level. we can t second guess that. you know, we ll never replace
morning taking pride in all of its heroes and there are so many. specifically the teachers who helped protect and comfort students as this deadly tornado barreled through. our brian todd had a chance to talk to one of these heroes. reporter: the sound of the terrifying moments when the tornado hit. lynn bretton and jessica orr are shaken, their voices quiver when they talk about it. monday afternoon when this massive tornado struck, they huddled with 25 kids inside a bathroom at briarwood elementary school. bretton covered two kids with her body and kept thinking don t let me die, just let me get these babies out of here. reporter: as the roof was torn off and the ceiling caved in on the bathroom, listen to the audio recording on bretton s cell phone of horrified kids, bretton trying to reassure them.
their kids, hoping they would be found alive. we now know that seven kids did not survive from that school. and what we have been able to s see, just how destroyed the school was, the level of destruction. until today, that is. our john king tousred the ruins with the moore police department. attended himself plaza towers elementary. take a look. in terms of when people first responded here, i mean, where did everybody go? we basically just surrounded the school and started running into different areas. some of this has been cleaned out. due to the search and rescue efforts. they re literally just climb oefing over debris. people were yelling for help, so pulling people out as quickly as possible. and that went on literally for hours. this was a hall of classrooms that led classrooms on each side. not connected, though. there was nothing? that was a classroom straight ahead. there was classrooms out here. you can see there s still tile. right. this is gone. this class
shelter? they didn t have anywhere to go other than an interior room. could the city, the state, or the federal government have done something to prevent the magnitude of this tragedy? those are key questions as president obama prepares to visit the storm ravaged area sunday. today secretary of homeland security janet napolitano was there. the death toll stands at 24 from the tornado. john king is in moore, oklahoma, tonight where he got a tour of the rubble left behind plaza towers elementary school. john, that key question, people seem to be asking, parents we re going to hear if later on tonight is could the deaths at that school have been prevented? erin, it certainly is a fair question. when you walk through that school, i don t care if you re a journalist, you being a parent of any kind, you re stunned at the devastation. the school was shaped like a u. most of the two legs are gone. the crossbar still remains. a full day there are more than