track of him. we haven t seen him since. was skyular s mother holding on to him? yes, she was. she lost him in the aftermath of all of this. it s terrible. and no one s seen him since. the rest of the family s doing okay. we ve got to find him. here are other faces of the missing. relatives looking for michelle quavado and her daughter, isabel. tiara whitley was shopping when the tornado hit. no one has heard from her since. and people looking for margaret bjoergenson, living in a retirement community close to st. john s regional medical center that was hit by the tornado. to help go to cnn.com specials impact your world web site. israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu addresses both houses of congress less than an hour from now. and you can bet he will talk about president obama s idea for
the ninth deadliest in u.s. history. the only good news missouri governor jay nixon has just announced that the number of people rescue from the rubble alive has now gone up to 17. the national weather service says winds reached nearly 200 miles per hour making it an ef-4, the second highest tornado rating. the st. john s regional medical center in joplin took a direct hit. at least four people were killed there. the roof was torn off. cars and a medical helicopter were tossed around, doctors and nurses had about 20 minutes warning to move patients into hallways away from hundreds of windows that would soon shatter. the headline in today s kansas city star reads simply, joplin, shredded. this is what it looked like at 5:41 p.m. the wind are out of the
reporter: this amateur video captured the twister as it touched down. massive tornado doing massive destruction. reporter: at the heart of the destruction, st. john s regional medical center, a seven-story structure. now missing its top two floors, all of the windows have been blown out. mark harrington was in the emergency room. you heard a loud roar, all the windows started breaking. you could hear things blowing through the hospital. reporter: forecasters say this twister was one of the deadliest in missouri history and could have been worse had there been no warnings. all 25 sirens in the city of joplin did activate. according to our records, we had about a 20-minute notice when we turned on the sirens to when we actually got the first report of a tornado strike. reporter: officials are convinced advanced notice of the approaching storm saved lives. because of the stationary weather pattern holding over the midwest, the low-pressure system which is driving these nasty
breath away here. multiple homes, businesses, destroyed. cars that have been flipped. mangled debris everywhere you look. people are trying to help people out any way they can. reporter: one of the primary sources of emergency care, st. john s regional medical center, was also destroyed. i m a cardiologist. reporter: dr. ron smalling was on duty when the tornado hit. when we came out it looked like a war zone. it looked like we had been hit with a bomb and so we rushed to the patients. some of them were on ventilators. but they were all, some of them were cut up with glass. all the windows in the 12-bed ccu were blown out and the ceiling tiles were all down so we began to mobilize and get the patients out of the rooms. reporter: the raw emotion of the moment was difficult for everyone witnessing it. it s tough. no question about that. nbc s al roker and the weather channel s mike bettes reporting from joplin, missouri. former minnesota governor tim pawlenty left his state
the national weather service says winds reached nearly 200 miles per hour making it an ef-4, the second highers tornado rating. the st. john s regional medical center in joplin took a direct hit. at least four people were killed there. the roof was torn off. cars and a medical helicopter were tossed around, doctors and nurses had about 20 minutes warning to move patients into hallways away from hundreds of windows that would soon shatter. the headline in today s kansas city star reads simply, joplin, shredded. this is what it looked like at 5:41 p.m. the wind are out of the north. it s coming back around. the tornado is on the ground right here. get the sirens going. get the sirens going. back up. i am. it s a mile wide tornado. it s leveling the south side of