kansas.com. she s on the phone. roll the video and then we ll talk to her. kind of scared. jaime green, it s dark. you see the skies lighting up. was this before or after? did it become was it dark when it happened and then it got lighter, or did you take this after the initial pictures? i took this way before i shot any of the devastation. this was i believe when the tornado was about to happen. and then my friend was like behind me in another car, and she s from kansas and she says that you should never stay in a car during a tornado. so we didn t really have many
jaime green, it s dark. you see the skies lighting up. was this before or after? did it become was it dark when it happened and then it got lighter, or did you take this after the initial pictures? i took this way before i shot any of the devastation. this was i believe when the tornado was about to happen. and then my friend was like behind me in another car, and she s from kansas and she says that you should never stay in a car during a tornado. so we didn t really have many options. so we got out of the car shortly after i shot that. and we huddled down. it was my friend and i and her 6-year-old daughter. we huddled down over her daughter out in the elements but up against a wall, up against an office building. our only other option would have been to throw a bench through the glass window which we actually thought of, but we didn t. we decided not to. so that was again, that video was taken maybe a minute or two before the tornado.
all right. joplin, missouri will never be the same again. it is different. the map will change there because of this tornado that whipped through earlier this evening and caught a lot of people off guard. one person caught up in the middle of it was jaime green. she shot some photos with us. she s with the wichita eagle. but also her video is on kansas.com. she s on the phone. roll the video and then we ll talk to her. kind of scared.
it s from chasertv.com. rob, roll it. oh, my. and then just a short time ago, storm chaser, his name is steve polly got out in the middle of this driving on the interstate, and he said he didn t think he was going to make it touch and go for a while. these videos he took at a gas station. listen. come on. yes, it is. all right. our jacqui jeras, our meteorologist joins us now. some officials in missouri reporting that there are at least as many as 24 fatalities from this tornado that touched down, and they are saying there s widespread damage across the city s south side. that s right, don. it was just an incredible tornado that touched down just before 6:00 local time there. a multi-vortex tornado touched down in downtown joplin and just stripped a path of destruction through the city. there are many buildings which have been damaged. homes have been flattened and trees broken off and stripped from their bark, and, unfortunately, we re concerned that that death t
so an incredible situation unfolding in joplin, missouri. unfortunately, it s very reminiscent of what happened a few weeks ago in northern alabama. absolutely. to our viewers, here is the reality of it. 24 fatalities reported so far. widespread damage across the country from a tornado touching down. they don t know how many fatalities, how many injuries in all of this. people there being called the walking wounded. as jackie said, evacuating a hospital. they set up mobile facility. missouri department of transportation is saying i-44 is closed down because of damage. and here is what we re hearing from the governor of missouri. jay nixon. he said significant law enforcement assets and the national guard are now being deployed, now being deployed. and so we re going to try to get all of those people on the ground. when you hear the national guard being deployed, chad myers, our meteorologist who is joining us by phone, you know this is big trouble. well, you just don t ha