areas back in downtown oklahoma city two, three feet he of water. cars halfway buried. trees down everywhere from a weak torna÷o that went through the south side of oklahoma city. we he saw a violená tornado a little further west of oklahoma city south of el reno and intercepted it with the armored vehicle and actually had the hood ripped off of the dominator, our armored vehicle. our rqáqp)ch vehicle. shepard: exactly hello? shepard: you had damage earlier to your own vehicle, didn t you, reed? we had the hood ripped off of the vehicle. it was a violent tornado. our vehicle is custom built to survive the winds of the tornado. the hydraulics dropped and spikes deployed. it was an intent tornado. a quarter, half mile wide and then came across the weather channel crew and ran to help them. saw my friend down there and they were okay. minor lacerations but we he carried all their equipment to the support vehicle and the tornado just expanded a lot faster than everybody thou
we do know that we had large power outages probably from straightline winds and a lot o of circulation. some cyclones and possible tornadoes that hit the ground. no communities that called and said we hav been hit hard, come help us. we are still in the midst of the storm itself and we still have echos standing around the area south of norman itself that we are keeping a close eye on plus just the general storms going on. shepard: the governor of oklahoma. mary fallon. mentioned the first two reports of death. we were reporting on this on the fox report. a mother and baby injured west of the city of oklahoma city around the part where the storms first developed where the tornadoic activity developed 30 miles west of the city. we now know that a mother and baby have been killed as the tqtdnáupáe. the car off thent sad to report.
governor fallon, one thing you have been crystal clear on throughout the tornado emeñgencies for the last couple of weeks is once the strms are on the way the last place you need to be is on the highway. absolutely. and that is what is driving me crazy tonight is that the storms, we gave people a lot of notice. even on the highways. as i was driving back from the moore/norman area earlier to oklahoma city, about 4:30 or 5:00 tonight we had a sign up on the highway that said dangerous storms possible, heed weather alerts and had that flashing on the electric billboards over the highway on i-35 just right around moore where it hit. so we were warning people and telling people the last several days and all day today just to be aware of the weather because the storms come up really quick. they just build suddenly. and when i was leaving norman around 4:30 to 5:00 it was just overcast. but then the storm was here by
around 80 miles an hour are which will do plenty of damage and probably still some hail maybe between golf ball and tennis ball size. very big hail. but the heaviest rotation is not being picked up any longer so the tornado warni gs dropped there. that is certainly great news. shepard: no doubt it is. back to st. louis if we could. it sounds like there is an imminent threat there. yeah, and i think the storm is crossing probably right about over the river right now and getting back crossing into missouri, most of st. louis is on the kansas side and now cutting over excuse me, missouri cutting over into the illinois side. louis on the eastern side of the mississippi river there into illinois. same goes still to the south of st. louis. but that is heading in towards the millstat area of ell. edwardsville, illinois, island illinois those are the towns that need to be taking guard.
and it was a dangerous situation. we saw severe structural damage. looked like some where in the union city el reno a)ea and then the same storm went through south oklahoma city and we were communicating with mike norman in the oklahoma city area to keep everybody warned in the path of the storms and right now, i m trying to get to my house in norman which was two miles south of the ef5 damage path. we are driving through the ef5 damage path, what was that ten days ago and the same area had tornado warnings and tornadoic winds move through again. definitely a really bad situation and our thoughts and prayers go out to the people here in oklahoma city. this is our own backyard. so people need to take all of the tornado warnings seriously in the st. louis area because you got to assume the worst case scenario. shepard: reed timmer thanks for your reporting tonigñt. stay in touch and stay on the