storm. a state trooper helped her check for debris lodged in her head. the damage from wind and rain? ma massive. this road east of oklahoma city nearly washed away. you can see the earth beneath it, falling away. across a huge swath of the country, power cut to hundreds of thousands. power lines like this one in bridgeton, missouri, on fire or knocked right over. even before the sun rose, businesses took stock of the damage. trucks and warehouses badly damaged in earth city, missouri. one of the tractor trailers blew over, rolled over his car. we ve got four or five trucks that are damaged. driving in towns or highways, treacherous. not only flooding, but lightning and debris on roads made for slow going across the storm s path. in gillespie, illinois, the road badly damaged. the hope now? no more tornadoes. joining me on the phone from
oklahoma city, the governor of oklahoma. we are so sorry to hear about the life loss and destruction in your state once again. do you think the fatalities and injury numbers will go up any? we certainly hope not. we were taken by shock that we could have another storm like in oklahoma. we weren t surprised the weather got bad, but we just couldn t believe we were having to go through this all again in such a short period of time after we had such terrible storms the week before. but i will say the state is responding well. we re good at handling disasters, were well prepared yesterday. opened up our command center early, just a couple of clouds in the skies. we actually had alerted our department of transportation to utilize their electronic signs over their highways, that basically said be aware that
also work with his some of the communities and is just fwlad for the help. so i m grateful to be here. of course, we haven t even mentioned hurricane season. it begins today. experts say it will be an active season in the atlantic, with as many as 11 hurricanes. but any look forward is haunted by looking back to hurricane sandy. we ve learned a lot from that romney storm. from texas to maine, people are being warned to be prepared. last year s hurricane sandy certainly reinforced that point. from florida to maine, superstorm sandy s long reach touched every state along the eastern seaboard. hardest hit, new jersey and new york. cities, towns, swallowed up as sandy s catastrophic storm surge swept ashore.
be confusion and misrepresenting the storm, the national weather service decided to go with high winds and flood warnings. it s impossible to say if some lives would have been saved if the attention getting hurricane warning would be in place. if and when there s a next time, officials say there won t be an issue. there s been a policy change. they can issue and keep up hurricane and tropical storm watches and warnings even if something isn t technically a hurricane or tropical storm anymore. reporter: but they argue, no matter what you call it, people aren t necessarily prepared for the storm threat they re most vulnerable to. some are vulnerable to storm surge, some aren t. some are vulnerable to river flooding. some aren t. don t focus on the skinny black line or the number. focus on the impacts, what you need to protect your family. reporter: and do it now. it s too late to figure out a plan when the storm is at your doorstep. this is expected to be an active hurricane se
there is potential for damaging storms from 4:00 to 6:00 tonight and be on the lookout and keep your radios tuned on and watch the newscasts. stay off the streets. we were telling people. and the highway patrol, local law enforcement in the various counties that were hit did a superb job going up and down the highways with their lights and siren sirens on to let people know about storms that can be coming up really quickly. and even employers started letting their employees go home at 3:00, 4:00 in the afternoon and storms started coming down about 5:30 to 6:00 on. and the biggest challenge we had last night was a lot of people, i think as far as we can tell, probably left their homes and were going to just find another bigger, secure building somewhere, maybe those that didn t have storm shelters. so our major intersect got clogged up as the storm that s coming through, both the east