touched down monday afternoon, leaving dozens killed and a path of destruction in its wake. these are the latest developments here. the official death toll now stands at 51. 20 children are among the dead. but those numbers are expected to rise sharply. we re told about 40 more bodies have been taken to the medical examiner s office overnight. president obama has signed a disaster declaration for all of oklahoma. federal emergency aid is on the way and is badly needed. and texas is sending its search and rescue team to assist first responders here. there were so many people on the ground helping. and overnight, rescuers combing through wreckage of the tower plaza elementary school that was flattened, just flattened by the tornado. i see the remnants of it here. seven students were killed there alone. let me give you a sense of why this is so dangerous. i can reach anywhere around me and pick up something like this. this giant, twisted, ugly, sharp piece of corrugated metal.
fast. that s about twice the average speed of a tornado and look at this building. i m standing on the roof of this building. fortunately it was vacant. now it s a pile of rubble. twisted steel beams here, just a real mess out here. the preliminary counts at 54. some are duplicate reports so that will likely go down. obviously the worst day of the season, a very slow start to the season going into the past three days, thursday, friday and saturday. you can look around. here s some more buildings off to my right, it to your left. this is another vacant building. it was a funeral home and then down to the left of there is another building that is a total shambles. corrugated metal on these power lines and what they re doing today is trying to get into the neighborhood in front of me. the mayor of yazoo city still thinks there may be people trapped, some people still unaccounted for although that remains to be seen. they have not been able to get in there except with four wheelers because
there is some, especially the old growth trees, the oaks that are more than 100 years old, have come down and fallen on people s homes, in addition to the fact that we ve seen some of the corrugated metal ripped off buildings as well as some of the gas stations, like the valero that has lost its overhang. but the truth is, the heavy damage that you often associate with a hurricane is not as dramatic, at least as we ve seen here in victoria, because, remember, when harvey hit victoria, population of about 67,000, it was a category 1 storm, meaning that the winds were far less. it doesn t mean it s not dangerous, but it means that the potential for damage is certainly not as strong as when it s a category 3 or a category 4. the eye wall, as you know, had winds clocked up to 140, 145 miles an hour, alex. yeah. well, the big issue is flooding. you are appropriately standing and discussed what s going on in that river behind you.