it gets an impressive 34 highway mpg and comes with no charge scheduled maintenance. and right now you can drive one home for practically just your signature. sign. then drive. get zero due at signing, zero down, zero deposit, and zero first month s payment on any new 2014 volkswagen. hurry, this offer ends january 2nd. visit vwdealer.com today the biggest education story this year one in which tradit n traditional public schools are steadily disappearing. and the thing so many of them have in common. msnbc.com s trymaine lee has chronicled the school shutdowns across the country, from cities like philadelphia, where 9,000 public school students have been rerouted to different schools often having to travel through dangerous intersections and neighborhoods. in normandy, missouri, near st. louis, the economic effects of students leaving so-called
a car. stick around for this story. homeless and in high school. a teenager boosted from the foster system, finally finding a family. a wonderful ending. it is just fantastic. welcome back to early start. i m john berman. i m zoraida sambolin. 31 minutes past the hour. this morning a better sense of the devastation across the midwest after dos of tornadoes ripped through a wide swath of the nation. a live look at washington, illinois. much that city now in ruins. near st. louis, a grandmother and her brother died when a tornado ripped their home apart. the home was gone and the 78-year-old grandmother was buried under a pile of rubble. just kept saying, get me out, get me out. and then i just was holding her and i told her how much i loved her. we were planning on a
about 60% contained. wildfires are also burning in new mexico and colorado, both fires leading to evacuations. no reports of injuries or destroyed buildings. and a weather nightmare continues in the midwest. take a look at this. a levee breached near st. louis, the water gushing out of the mississippi river, now threatening small towns all along the river as emergency workers scramble to reinforce barricades and temporary dikes. residents in st. charles county near st. louis had to be evacuated last night after the levee was breached. flood warnings and advisories are in effect from northern illinois to louisiana. so more rain? oh, unfortunately definitely still rain in the forecast. we keep seeing this, that time of year in the middle of the country. we have the threat for rain and severe weather over the plains. oklahoma city again under the gun today as well as portions of
st. francis is safe. the road closed because powerlines are down and falling rocks from the fire. but allowing residents to get back into community, thousand or so people who were evacuated, who can come back in now and check on their homes and for most of them, returning to homes unlike the stilson family, carol. stephanie elam, live from california this morning. midwest weather nightmare rages on. take a look at this a levee breached nearly st. louis. the mississippi gushing out. emergency workers scramble to reinforce barricades and temporary dikes. residents in st. charles county near st. louis had to be evacuated last night after the levy breached. flood warnings and advisories in effect from northern illinois to louisiana. meteorologist indra petersons joins me now for more. so any rain in the forecast for the fine people of missouri? unfortunately, yeah, looks like there will be more showers
pack up and go. i want to be safe rather than sorry. don t want to take chances. in many places along the mississippi, near st. louis, high water threatens small towns. sandbags, temporary dikes, the only thing standing between a surge of stormwater and main street. in some community, commercial districts already underwater. other towns are isolated as the rising river closes roads. as bad as it is, it could have been worse. in most places, the water is expected to crest an inch shy as what is regarded as major flooding. but what makes this event so tra mat dramatic, five months ago, the mississippi at record lows due to drought. i m standing on the exposed bottom mississippi river. since then, the river shot up close to 45 feet. it s pretty crazy to see how fast it came. there had been fears the drought would close the river to