and peggy. the best news we can bring you from joplin is that two people have been rescued from the rubble alive in the past 24 hours. no rescuing necessary at this house here. the gentleman who owns that pickup truck and this home told me he wasn t around sunday when the tornado struck at about 5:00 in the afternoon. he was about ten miles away. you can see his home suffered some pretty significant damage, but it is pretty intact when you consider this is what his neighbors homes look like. it is absolute devastation here. it is really an apocalyptic landscape. an ominous sight in the skies in oklahoma, where at least three twisters have been spotted. tornado watches and warnings in effect in several states. i drove out here soon as i thought it would be safe. i was expecting trees gone, maybe a roof. a roof. but obviously, it s totally, totally gone. reporter: the city of joplin was decimated by a massive tornado sunday that has been upgraded from an ef-4 to an ef-5, with winds
share his story, he runs in the direction of them while so many of us would run the opposite direction. jim read is here to talk to us about a few different things including the warnings the public gets. we have so many questions of how much a heads up the people in joplin had, we understand about 17 minutes. i saw in a news release today that two of their sirens are down, damaged by the storm. how good are the warning systems right now in the country. that s a great question. i m happy to say the warning system both through the national weather service and private is excellent. the warning in tuesday ka los t7 minutes. jenna: is it a game of telephone, how does that get passed on? for the public the warnings are issued by the national weather service and more than likely comes from your local
they comb the wreckage for any sign of survivors. confirmed death 122. remain people remain unaccounted for right now. let s go to mike tobin in joplin. i guess the tornado sirens were going off again, that had to be terrifying, mike. absolutely terrifying for the poor people who have been through so much here. but they are waking up this morning feeling like they got a break. after huddling in the shelters one more time the storms dodged joplin, missouri, in fact the rain didn t even come down here. the storms missed this little city to such an extent that the rescuers were able to comb through this vast debris field overnight. i ll step out of the way so you can look at this one more time, and you never really get over this scene of the rolling hills and destruction just as far as the eye can see. in fact if you look closely to the next hill over you can see some of the heavy equipment that is moving out into the debris kneeled with the effort of picking through the debris, still h
from joplin. i m worried about his safety too. we re all hoping and praying this evening. greta: maybe i ll help you out with that. we ll have more with kris gutierrez right now. kris joins us live from outside joplin, missouri on the phone. janice dean is worried about you, tell me more, where are you and what is going on? reporter: you we we are on i-44 heading south towards tulsa we want new pictures of the storm that is pounding state of oklahoma. my concern in joplin is this, we left the hotel, that was without water, had no cable television service. my concern is, i wonder if the people in joplin who need to heed the warning, hear these warnings if they are getting that information. my concern, obviously for those people there, the people 1500 people still unaccounted for in joplin.
please don t do that. i no he we show these pictures of tornadoes taken by storm chasers and something bothers me about that too. you should just head to safety. head somewhere save. reporter: they made it into that room just in time. ed, thanks so much. in joplin, missouri, time is running out in the search for survivors. it has now been more than 63 hours since the massive tornadoes struck the town. some 1500 people still unaccounted for. that number is expected to drop rapidly as communications improve and speaking of communication, here is one survivor s account of how one father franticly relied on his cell phone during and after the tornado. we were headed west. it just got uglier and uglier. we turned getting very close to home and we saw the swirling and knew immediately what was going on. we couldn t hear anything. so i did a quick u-turn, went to