buildings sustaining significant damage. that includes one of the city s main hospitals. the national guard on patrol with a state of emergency in effect. andres cue teams they keep searching today, this afternoon, all through the day for survivors. joplin, missouri, the latest victim of a volatile wave of turbulent springtime weather. brian todd in the thick of it. reporter: drew, rescue teams are combing through grid by grid, house by house in this city. the houses that are left are severely damaged, but frankly in this part of the city not many houses are left. you mentioned about 1/3 of the houses in this downtown area were severely damaged. by that you can take to mean flattened. behind me you can see the wreckage of some of them that is left. now the weather is complicating things as these teams go through the grids of this city on foot mostly and pick through this. the lightning has been rolling in. thunder, rain, all day long. it has made their job, much, much diffi
the former british prime minister tony blair testifying there about the iraq war. the committee there really trying to get him to drill down on some of the specific communications that he made to george w. bush, the former u.s. president, at the heart of this argument that they re addressing is whether tony blair went further in those private communications to the u.s. than what he told the british public out in the open. we ll keep an eye on that, and stay on top of any developments. in brazil, survivors of last week s deadly mudslides are helping workers dig through the debris. some say that the death toll may reach 1,000. now you can see for yourself, the destruction left by brazil s worst-ever natural disaster, for many brazilians this tragedy is still unfolding as hundreds remain on the missing list. this man had been one of them.
in. thunder, rain, all day long. it has made their job, much, much difficult. they re trying to find people who might still be trapped in some areas, these pockets. again, the window for that is closing. the weather is very bad. the death toll may in fact go up. we heard that from officials all day that you can expect it to go up as they begin the pain staking work of combing through the wreckage here. they re warning people now, don t be so quick to go back to your homes. not only because of the weather, because the lightning strikes are still going on might spark fires. they ve had reports of fires through the the city since the tornado, gas leaks and downed power lines are all over the place. drew, you can see behind me, this is still very treacherous work around here. brian, like you we ve been waiting to get updates from officials on what we hope is a death toll that will not rise and what we hope is a survivors story of people coming out of the rubble. i m not seeing either on