that moore, the town of moore has been hit since 1999 with a fierce tornado. i wonder if the public school and private school officials have a plan when the tornado rolls through? now, you say the school didn t have a basement. and then the kids were left relegated to go to the hallway, which isn t much protection from atom bomb type storm. i m wondering whether you know, in this area and other areas in the midwest that are prone to getting tornadoes they are going to have to, you know, either big basements or things like that. that s a line of reporting that we ll do. now, as far as you are concerned. go ahead, john. i was going to say and i should point out, bill, that the newer schools that were built here in moore, oklahoma city, norman oklahoma, they all have safe rooms or they have stabbed alone tornado shelters. but briar wood a little bit further north of here and plaza towers were old
i was just like i don t want to die today. and joining us now from moore, oklahoma, fox news correspondent john roberts. john, have you been covering the story all day. what has made the deepest impression on you? bill, i think it was what you just heard right there. and it was the deaths of those nine children. seven of them at an elementary school that is just a few blocks over from where i am standing, the plaza towers elementary school. you know, any loss of life, in a tragedy like this is heart-breaking. but when it is children, and when those children are in school, it s particularly heart breaking. you send your child off to school in the morning and i talked with governor fallon about this just a few minutes ago. you send your child off to school in the morning, you think that it s going to be a safe place. and then by the afternoon, by 3:00 in the afternoon, that safe place that you thought you were sending your child to is suddenly rent asunder like pancake
one.5% of the globe. so, produces this type of weather. the problem too is we have some more people living in the southern united states than we did in the 1950s. i went to oklahoma city. this storm that we are looking at right now, that s one of the most powerful tornadoes ever to hit the u.s.a., right? yeah. it is. there is no question. but, the 19125 tri-state tornado had a path of 180 miles from missouri into indiana, it was two miles wide. when you go back and look at the history and the death of the tornado death, which have been decrease, a large part to noaa and storm chasers seeing all these things before that happened. you didn t have that before going on before. you understand people are living in harm s way. in 1962, oklahoma city moore was south of oklahoma city like it is now. but it s a much smaller town then. people living in harm s way and this goes through all the east coast. this is all throughout the midwest.
breaking news. the oklahoma tornado, we have now received word that among the 51 victims are 20 children. but the number of fatalities will increase by at least 40 according to the medical examiner. we just spoke with her. she said that the majority of the additional 40 will be children. joining us now, melisa newton. her husband is the chief meteorologist in a local abc affiliate. she took cover just moments before the tornade tornado tore through moore, oklahoma, leveling a school, damaging four other schools, homes and businesses, hospitals and banks. i mean, the list goes on and on. thanks for being with us, melease a. as i understand it,
counsel people over the next week. just story after story like that. so we are trying to be a place to connect resources with the needs of the people in our community. go ahead. i m sorry. i was going to say, that s been pretty amazing to see, the community, the state and really the country reaching out to these folk who is are hurting and struggling. ben, the country was watching right after 3:00, after that tornado hit moore, oklahoma. we were watching individuals down on the ground, going through debris, frantically trying to find what looked like children in that school, teachers in that school that had been possibly buried under the debris. when i was watching that video and all of us were, it was heartbreaking because you feel for those parents, the emergency crews couldn t get down there. you said, you were there on the scene, you saw this grandmother who was looking through the debris, hoping and praying i am sure as she was doing this, for her little grandchild.