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
1925, 1926 was not what it is now. we did not have people in centers, in big cities like this. people were out on their farm. a farm stead was two mile ace way from each other. to lose almost 800 people 85 years ago that was an amazing year. this year so far 1,000 tornados. officially 1,000 tornados already, but the start that almost started with zero for the first three months. the busiest season 2004. with 1800 tornados that day. do you remember the hurricane season of 2004? because i chose to forget that season as i was in the feel for 12 separate named storms. big, big hurricane season that year. let s hope that one doesn t lead to another, lead to another. it certainly could as the end of la nina out of the pacific ocean, it can cause events like we re seeing today and yesterday and obviously in alabama as well. i ve seen some comparative analysis being doeb to match that very thing.