for mile after mile, a huge swath of devastation cut through joplin, missouri. thousands of buildings have been damaged and destroyed, many of them completely level. now we have extraordinary images which show this devastation in a new way. let s walk over the cnn s tom foreman. you ve got the before tom and the after, and we can see this devastation so dramatically. yeah. take a look at this, wolf. it s good to see the before and have a point of reference. this is downtown, the big picture of joplin. i m going to move the here and mark the path as we move in. you see how it really cut through a central part of this town in a big way. let s go and look at some of the details of what this is. this is south main street down here. if you go in close, you can see this is full of businesses like, you know, walgreens and pizza places and gas stations, all sorts of things that all of these neighborhoods out here
around and on top of you. a beautiful house in a joplin, missouri suburb reduced to a memory. they are telling a harrowing story of survival. jim was at work. i started to come home and got a text message from my wife. the first were jibberish and it said, help, roof under. reporter: then came a desperate voice mail from stacy he hasn t been able to listen to it now. there was this kind of pressure in my ears and the next thing i know is dirt and grit and stuff was hitting me in the face. i realized that the roof was coming off. reporter: she was in between those two kennels? yes. she was trying to have one hand on top of each. one on each. i could feel the dog crate
midwest, there s a desperate effort under way to find 1,500 people still unaccounted for in the devastated city of joplin, missouri. our correspondents are with families trying to track down their loved ones. stand by for this report. their frantic effort to survive the tornado was all caught on camera. you re about to see how employees and customers of a yogurt shop managed to save themselves at the very last minute. and the stunning courtroom outburst from the man accused of killing six people and wounding a congresswoman. that s followed by a stunning, truly stunning legal ruling. breaking news, political headlines, and jeanne moos all straight ahead. i m wolf blitzer. you re in the situation room. let s begin with the breaking news. as america s heartland braces for new storms with the region still reeling from devastating killer tornadoes, there are now storm warnings and watches up
survival. take the yogurt shop, where employees and customers saved themselves tats very last minute. here s cnn s jeanne meserve. reporter: just nine days after opening joplin s new cherry berry yogurt shop was reduced to this. surveillance tape shows a normal sunday. when warning sirens went off, they were ignored. no one really took it serious. we didn t think it was an actual tornado. we just thought heavy winds. reporter: but when employees and customers looked outside and saw the tornado bearing down, they were hustled to the back of the store. that s when it was just like, you, you, you, in the office, you, in the bathrooms. reporter: the tape shows the window shattering, the furniture flying, then camera after camera goes black. when the group emerged after the tornado, they found the store and the city all around it chewed up and spit out. they were all safe. they thought. but when the owners viewed the
rest in peace and not be, you know, out there where his family s not able to do what we need to do for him now, if it is him. reporter: she says she is ready for the worst possible news. she says a body was discovered in the area where her son was tossed from the car, a body that fits his description pretty closely. she says a person who guarded the body until authorities came to get it told her that. she s not been allowed to the morgue yet. it s so shocking. the winds are f-5 category, 200 miles an hour. some of the x-rays at that hospital in joplin where you are were discovered 60 miles away. you see these trees uprooted. you can just imagine if someone gets caught up in one of these tornadoes they could be miles away from where they originally