this is the cbs evening news with scott pelley. pelley: good evening. we got new numbers today on the devastation in oklahoma, and they are every bit as numbing as the pictures we ve been showing you since the tornado on monday. the mayor of oklahoma city said today as many as 13,000 homes were damaged or destroyed and 33,000 people have been affected. the mayor says the damage total could top $2 billion. the state medical examiner tells us there were 24 deaths; two of them were infants, four months old and seven months old. most of the children who died were in schools, and today parents are asking why those schools don t have shelters. here s elaine quijano. reporter: so this is where you rode out the storm? it is. reporter: helen grant rode out the tornado in her neighbor s underground shelter in moore. she thought her two daughters were also in a shelter at their nearby elementary school. instead, they huddled in a bathroom. really upset. i know there are shel
but when we re going to have this happen in oklahoma. the proof of that performance and the results of that market competition come in the wake of disasters on the back end. oklahoma insurance commissioner john doak. thank you very much. appreciate it. you re welcome. thank you. coming up, i ll tell you how they were responding to the oklahoma disaster on capitol hill today and why another political fight over disaster relief is already brewing. we ll be right back.
private insurance in the face of such catastrophic loss is enough. and joining me now is oklahoma insurance commissioner john doak. john, thank you for joining us. and i guess my first question is what is the general situation of folks living in tornado alley? obviously, the insurance industry, homeowners all know this is a possible risk. is insurance required? are most of these folks insured? are they going to be made whole? sure. absolutely. if they ve got a mortgage, then insurance would most likely be required. we ve done an educational campaign over the last year in the state of oklahoma to educate folks on the need of insurance after oklahoma s wildfires last year. we found out that there was a high percentage of our population in rural areas that did not have insurance, but i think it s going to be much different in this case coming through a rural metro area. i think it s going to be substantially different. and i think there s going to be thousands of claims here. and we re
victims were counted twice in the initial chaos. the monster tornado has now officially been deemed to reach ef5 stat nus at least one area. according to survey crews, which estimated peak winds of 210 miles per hour. its force, get this, is estimated to have been 8 to 600 times greater than the atomic bomb which exploded in hiroshima. the storm system initially created an ef0 tornado touching down at 2:56 yesterday afternoon just 16 minutes after the first warning was sounded. the funnel quickly intensified and within four miles and just ten minutes later had reached category 4. its track was eerily similar to the 1999 ef4 tornado that struck the area, and it devastated everything in its path, including two schools and a hospital. as we see this time lapse video of the tornado s progression, it was on the ground for 17 miles, creating a path of carnage that was at its greatest 1.3 miles wide. the number of homes destroyed is unknown. 237 people are reported injured, includin
destroyed and 33,000 people have been affected. the mayor says the damage total could top $2 billion. the state medical examiner tells us there were 24 deaths, two of them were infants four months old and seven months old. most of the children who died were this schools, and today parents are asking why those schools don t have shelters. here s elaine quijano. reporter: this is where you road out the storm? it is. reporter: helen grant road out the tornado in her neighbor s underground shelter in moore. she thought her two daughters were also in a shelter at their nearby elementary school. instead, they huddled in a bathroom. really upset. i know there are shelters in some of the schools and the fact that there weren t shelters in the other schools shows there s a disparity. reporter: eight children were killed monday when the tornado destroyed two schools. neither had a shelter. there is no state law in oklahoma requiring schools to have safe rooms or tornado shel