subtract those 30. obviously i m going to continue to get more information from the folks out here. this is all preliminary. lance, we appreciate your efforts, a parent yourself. and for those of us parents watching, it is difficult to watch, but nothing compared to those families. let s go back to adam. linda, we re at orr family farm. some people were able to make it to a basement in one of the houses here. but a lot of people had to ride out this storm inside of these horse stalls. one of those people that did this, lando, describe for me the moments that this tornado came through here and what was going on. it was all windy before the tornado came. i had no idea it was coming. just figured it was just like
he was at this school. that s plaza towers. we are probably 200 yards away. he says he s been pulling out children, third graders. they re in the classroom. i see a lot of people huddled outside the building. helicopters are flying in. there s fire and police officers doing door-to-door searches. it s absolute chaos down here. i ve never seen anything like this in my 18 years covering tornadoes here in oklahoma city. this is without question the most horrific okay, lance. we need to get this information. we understand what you re looking at and how horrific it is, but you are telling us that children were in the plaza tower elementary school, that the gentleman you were just talking to was pulling out third graders, is that correct? that is correct. i m racing over there as quickly as i can.
lance west is there, i m trying to see him from this vantage point. if you were with us about 11 minutes ago when we talked to lance, he said the authorities are there, search and rescue crews set up the yellow tape. they had cordoned off the area to keep parents and others back so they could hear if there were any cries for help from faculty or students believed to be trapped in that rubble. lance west told us previously that one of the rescuers on the scene indicated 75 children and/or faculty could have been in the school when the twister hit. lance also said that third graders were in a hall where they sought cover, and the third grade class is now the focus of much of this investigation and much of this search right now. he also told us many of the fourth, fifth, and sixth graders, we believe, were let out and were okay at a church there. of course, our concerns right
elementary school, 75 children believed to be in the hall when it hit. there is no safe spot for an f-5 if this turns out to be that. but lance, you were saying you saw at least one child who came out of the debris and was hugging a parent, is that correct? reporter: that is correct. a young man probably about 8 to 10 years old, i would say. that s a good sign. and i told you about that jeep, that four-wheel drive. she s being loaded into that jeep right now. also talked to a gentleman who has a child in the school. pulled his child out ten minutes before the tornado hit and came back to help in the search and rescue efforts. he told me they pulled out 30 kids alive, but the search continues for even more. so you re saying of the 75 who were sheltered in that school, 30 were pulled out alive? reporter: i do know there were 30 pulled out. i don t know if there are 75 more in there or if we can
they are bringing out some boards, some stretchers, what looks to be like all-out effort here momentarily, the national guard has arrived. i do have reason to believe that they have found some victims. excuse me, i asked one of the medics if he could confirm he just put his head down and said, i can t answer that. so much raw emotion out there right now. as we said earlier, when you actually are on the scene itself, because we ve all covered these before, through the prism of television, it s not like it is when you re on the scene and you re seeing the anguish of the parents and of the rescuers and of little ones being pulled out. it s a very, very tough job. lance is doing a great job of it right now. we re focused right now on