general. you have then tens of thousands throughout the state without power. we re pulling upon a scene here where the house lost half of its roof. surveying and sort of assessing the debris, overturned cars. on our way into reno early this morning, el reno, i should say, miguel, we saw some overturned semi trucks. damage or the magnitude of this storm until the sun came up. what s interesting and we found most interesting is our crew drives around el reno. you will turn a corner and see a section of the neighborhood that is untouched. nick, i can stop right there. you re breaking up a little bit. let me ask you one other question before we lose you all together. you are in moore cover that. you ve become basically our oklahoma bureau chief at this point. great job that you re doing, but how are people dealing with yet
killer tornadoes are forming with a speed and vengeance. last night el reno, oak oeklahos caught right in the path of the tornado. nick valencia is there. what have you been seeing? we re on the second floor of what once was a house and we re surrounded by volunteers who came to this residence. they had no idea who the owners were but decided to lend a helping hand. in fact, i want b to bring in one of the volunteers. she came here from houston. hi. what brought you here? i saw on the news that grand bury had a tornado, headed there for a few days to moore. and then today our leads are assessing damage from one of our churches so i drove out and asked if i could help. what was the response like? a lot love times people just want their privacy in a situation like this. how do you approach a family in oklahoma, so self reliant? the mother of the house here is an american red cross volunteer and she also works with some of the communities and she just seemed glad for the
let s get you up to speed on this morning s top story. as many as 23 tornadoes have touched down across five midwestern states. horizontal! i am south of i-40. it s going to be right here in front of me, mike. it s coming down right now. very, very big. an entire vortex coming down to the ground, mike. in the oklahoma city area, five people, including a mother and her child, they are dead. at least 71 others are hurt. but the town of moore, that s where a tornado last month killed 24 people. largely it was spared here. in the wake of all that, oklahoma and missouri, they are under states of emergency. all the way east of indiana, about 212,000 actually have no
we saw temperatures triple digits, and you get the ideal ingredients for the storms to start to build. that s why they were so intense and powerful. they will send out national weather service people and survey the damage and assess just how intense these tornadoses were. the ef-5 that was in moore, oklahoma, i think we might see a little less than that only because we did not see the population density that we saw in moore, so as soon as we get that information we will pass it along to you. okay. thank you. the national weather service says that five tornados of the 23 in total, five of those hit oklahoma. nick valencia joins me from el reno where one struck. tell me what you are seeing this morning, nick. reporter: hey, we drove here about 25 miles west of oklahoma city to a town called el reno, oklahoma.
power there. and while the main airports in oklahoma city and in st. louis, missouri, they have re-opened all morning, and departchures out of oklahoma city have been cancelled and now another threat is looming. rain from the storm system can trigger flash floods, and today s forecast includes large hail and potential for more tornadoes. authorities are warning people to stay inside. for now they are monitoring water and waiting for daylight to assess the damage. let s begin our coverage out of oklahoma with george howell. he is in union city. it s one of the communities that was really hit hard by the storm. george, you are in this area right in front of a home that has been damaged, probably 45 minutes from sunlight here. you have covered moore, oklahoma, with the storm that hit 12 days ago. how does this compare? reporter: it s hard to say.