house. and ed, you know, he was in europe when the first days and frantic hours of the tornado rescue began. how do the people greet him a week on? that s right. good morning, christine. certainly a lot of pressure on the president. several days, just about a week had passed as you note since this terrible tragedy. this is an area of the country where the president lost to john mccain in 2008, and so he had to make that extra special effort to show he was going to get on top of this. i can tell you it seemed like there were a lot of standing ovations at that memorial service a lot of people grateful for the president coming in, and this is just utter devastation. i mean the president himself noting that he had just been in alabama where there had been tornado devastation. this eclipsed even that, which had been so awful, and a reporter on air force one with the president said that as they came in and saw it overhead, it almost looked like a giant had come in to this city with a lawn
on this holiday morning. and we ve got a lot of news. we begin with the weather. first a new wave of spring storms is pounding the midwest. in fact, some of the worst damage is in battle creek, michigan. a storm packing 80-mile-an-hour winds snapped trees, brought down a lot of power lines. in fact, across the state some 100,000 homes and businesses lost power. a violent storm hit the chicago area. ferocious winds uprooting trees and sending them on the tops of houses and cars. the trees just doubled. it was the strongest wind i ve seen in a long time. that s the important part. nobody got hurt. houses can be rebuilt, people takes a long time for them to get rebuilt. the severe weather grounded 450 flights at o hare airport sunday. could be more of the same today. we ll let you know whether there could be more of this. that s not exactly the news you want if you re coming back from your holiday vacation. we want to know what s in store for you today. rob marcian
people went, even if they survived the storm, where are they now. 1,500 still officially missing. tom, thank you. the desperate, desperate search for those missing and the staggering task of how to go about starting all over. we have much more on the tornado devastation in joplin, missouri. it s true. you never forget your first subaru.
know for who knows when. reporter: she says her father, james williamson, had pa past addiction battles and moved to joplin to start fresh. the only information she has is he was working in a mcdonald s that got destroyed. perez is one of thousands in the joplin area searching for missing loved ones after the tornado. local and state officials are scrambling to organize the effort to find them. when you have folks that are lost, when you have folks that are missing, we are very cognizant of needing to talk to those families first in trying to get to the families. that s fine. reporter: a local call-in center has been overwhelmed since it plugged in the first phone jack. after the calls come in here, the information immediately goes into a database shared with the sheriff s office, the state highway patrol, and the first responders who are combing through all the neighborhoods. but the kinks in the proces
teams with he has to deal with the tornado devastation back here at home. i m wolf blitzer and you re in the situation room. it s been almost 24 hours since the people of joplin, missouri hid in their homes as the tornado tore through their city. officials say 116 people were killed and many more injured. this makes this storm tied for the second deadliest twister. the toll is expected to climb as one resident puts it. everybody s going to know people who are dead. a massive rescue operations under way that has been hampered by more bad weather. many pipes are damaged. despite the obstacles of success today, the governor says that there were seven rescues.