>> i william take thee catherine to be my wedded wife. >> for better or for worse. >> for better or for worse. >> to love and to cherish. >> and thereto i give thee my troth. >> and thereto i give thee my troth. >> warner: and mark shields and david brooks analyze the week's news. >> brown: that's all ahead on tonight's newshour. major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: ♪ ♪ moving our economy for 160 years. bnsf, the engine that connects us. >> i mean, where would we be without small businesses? >> we need small businesses. >> they're the ones that help drive growth. >> like electricians, mechanics, carpenters. >> they strengthen our communities. >> every year, chevron spends billions with small businesses. that goes right to the heart of local communities, providing jobs, keeping people at work. they depend on us. >> the economy depends on them. >> and we depend on them. pacific life-- the power to help you succeed >> and by the bill and melinda gates foundation. dedicated to the idea that all people deserve the chance to live a healthy productive life. and with the ongoing support of these institutions and foundations. and... this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> brown: the tornado death count across the south hit 318 today. that made it the deadliest outbreak of twisters since 1932. alabama alone had well over 200 deaths, and the president flew there to see the disaster firsthand. ray suarez has the story. >> i know all this doesn't compare to life, because life is so precious. i have another chance, we have another chance. >> suarez: in the stricken city of tuscaloosa, alabama, today, survivors sought comfort just in the knowledge they lived through wednesday night's disaster. the view from overhead showed damage almost beyond comprehension. a few cars on a rare passable road were the only thing recognizable. some people trickled back to what had been their homes, searching for pieces of their lives. >> it was less than five minutes, and it was gone. >> it's unbelievable. it's still not real to me. >> suarez: equally staggering, the still rising numbers of dead. one town pleaded for more body bags, and rescuers and survivors kept searching for those still missing. >> justin! justin! >> i... i don't think he made it. i don't think he made it. but we need confirmation. >> suarez: president and mrs. obama saw it all for themselves as they arrived in tuscaloosa this morning. >> i've got to say, i've never seen devastation like this. it is heart-breaking. >> suarez: the obamas viewed the damage with alabama's governor, robert bentley, and tuscaloosa's mayor, walt maddox. and they visited a damaged school, now being used as an aid distribution center, and met with now-homeless residents. >> i want to just make a commitment to the communities here that we are going to do everything we can to help these communities rebuild. we can't bring those who have been lost back, the... you know, they're alongside god, at this point. >> suarez: the governor called out more than 2,000 national guard troops to help with recovery and security. but the task of rebuilding promised to be long and costly. one tornado alone left a path at least 175 miles long. in and around birmingham, rescuers picked through splintered neighborhoods today, as authorities mobilized to clean up and rebuild. the suburban town of concord was all but obliterated. police departments sealed off the area from gawkers, so residents could retrieve whatever they could find. residents in nearby pratt city said they were in desperate need. >> something as simple as a toothbrush, clothing. there are some people, all they've got is a robe. so we got to find clothing for them and provide those things for them, so they can start rebuilding their lives. >> suarez: and in pleasant grove, where nine people died... >> pleasant grove will never be the same. never will be. >> you get to a point in your life where you feel like you're settled and you don't have to worry about anything, and now you have to start over. yeah, it's disappointing. >> suarez: nearly one million people across the state also had to cope with the loss of power, water and communications. desperate drivers hunted for fuel for cars and generators after power outages forced many gas stations to close. some drove across the state line into maury county, tennessee. but help was on the way. volunteers in andalusia, alabama, loaded three tractor trailers with water and other relief supplies. and convoys of power trucks departed from florida and from as far away as kansas to help get the lights back on. meanwhile, mississippi struggled to cope with sweeping destruction in towns like smithville. governor haley barbour toured there. >> the great need here is for us to have the capacity to unravel all of this debris, to see if we've lost any more citizens. and that's going to take a little time. and then, we'll start cleaning up and rebuilding. i can tell you, smithville, they're chomping at the bit to start cleaning up and rebuilding. >> suarez: the national weather service reported the tornado that hit smithville had winds of 205 miles an hour, the most power to hit the state since 1966. even tombstones from the 1800s were ripped up and knocked aside. and the roll call of disaster continued across the south-- in tennessee... >> you wake up, you see everything you worked for and how long it took you, and it's all gone. >> in about ten seconds, it's gone. >> suarez: ...and in northern georgia, where dozens of homes were damaged or destroyed. we get the latest on the city hit hardest by the storms-- at least 42 people were killed and roughly 900 were injured after a tornado ripped through tuscaloosa, alabama. mayor walter maddox described what happened as a "nightmare," and he joins me now. mayor, do you still have a large number of missing, that number of missing and dead may still yet rise? >> right now, we know of 45 confirmed deaths within the city of tuscaloosa and our police jurisdiction. we have 990 that have been reported injured as a result of tornado, and we've got scores of people missing. but we think most of that is due to miscommunication and not necessarily being part of the debris field. >> suarez: so there is still hope that they may turn up somewhere else. >> we hope so. one of the issues that we encountered is you get calls into multiple sources looking for someone, cell towers are down, power has been out. so you are dealing with issues of trying to be accountable for someone. in terms of who we think are missing, that number is going to... in terms of do we think we have any more fatalities out in the debris field, we were able to do major sweeps today with different sets of cadaver dogs. and thank god, we didn't have anyone today that we found. >> suarez: along with that terrible loss of life and the number of injured, in the last 48 hours, have you had a chance to really take a count of what your city has lost? >> we have lost a 5.9-mile stretch of our city with half mile to a mile wide. it is utter destruction. as i told the president, this is a nightmare. not only have we lost such a large part of our city, which we are about 100,000, we lost our environmental services fleet. it's gone. our emergency management agency which handles disaster-- blown away. our fleet of garbage trucks, trash trucks-- obliterated. we lost fire stations. we lost police precincts, we lost the main communication tower. we lost our entire ability to provide recovery efforts after this storm. but the good news is, is that our heart may be broken, our souls are strong, with the work of the governor and the president, we're going to make it through this crisis, some how, some way. >> suarez: well, you mentioned that the president was on hand, along with your governor and your united states senator walking through the town with you today. what kind of help is on tap, and what dow need? >> well, what we need two things from the federal government. we're going to need reimbursements for the millions, probably tens of millions we're going to spend in this cleanup effort. and the second thing is we're going to need help finding home for all those that have lost. the direct tornado track, those directly in the path of the tornado, numbered over 6,000. those in the damaged track of the tornado numbered over 15,000. you are talking about one seventh of your city was touched or damaged during the course of this tornado. we're going to need those state and federal resources to cope with this crisis. on the housing issue, if we can't get some quick solutions to that, we're going to be facing a humanitarian crisis in the weeks to come. >> suarez: what did the president tell you today? >> the president told us, number one, that he's going to get the full backing of fema. and i believe it-- he was engaged, intent, and committed to helping the people of tuscaloosa recover. he also suggested ways we could coordinate through hud, so not only do we rebuild, we rebuild better. we begin with first-time home builder programs, provide incentives for small businesses. and the federal government has the resources and capacity to make that happen. >> suarez: when you've got so many people with so many needs over such a wide area, how do phase this thing? what's job one and has it already started? >> job one is search and recovery. that is making sure that everyone is accounted for. job two, we're going to be phasing in tomorrow, and that's cleaning the debris. we're going to try to get on... we're working through volunteers to begin get on private property, like you see behind me, so we can begin getting that cleaned up and beginning mid- next week, we start with public roads and right-of-ways. we've got one seventh of our city, a large city here in alabama that is literally shut down. and right now, our efforts feel like we're throwing rocks against the battleship because of the enormity of this. we're going to make progress, hour-by-hour, day-by-day and week by week. >> this has been called one of the worst natural disasters in the united states since hurricane katrina. now, we know, these many years later, new orleans still is not the city that it was before katrina hit. when you look at the extent of the damage in tuscaloosa, can you can see that it's going to be many years before your city is what it was at the beginning of this week? >> it could be many years. but what we're focused on is today-- let's find everyone, make sure they are accounted for. and tomorrow, we begin the process of moving this debris, slowly but surely. but i'll bet you this. the resilient spirit of our citizens has been on display for the world to see. and when tuscaloosa is rebuilt, it's going to be better than it was before. we're not going to let the 45 individuals who passed away in this storm die in vain. and we're committed to doing everything we can do building a better tomorrow for this region. >> suarez: did it make a difference to have the president there? in the midst of all this terrible event and the real losses, the catastrophic losses in people's lives, here suddenly is one of the most famous people in the world. were people bucked up by that? >> i only got part of your question, but it has been a catastrophic loss of life. it's going to be difficult-- it's difficult for us to even imagine that 45 people, on wednesday morning, went to work, fed their children, did what we do every day, and then got caught up in this terrible tragedy. that is going to be a constant reminder to me, every hour of the day, that we are going to work tirelessly to rebuild this city so that their family members, their friends can see their legacy from now on. >> mr. mayor, our condolences on your terrible loss and good luck with everything you have to do. >> thank you very much. >> suarez: april, in fact, has been the one of the worst months for recorded deaths from tornadoes in this country. it's prompting many questions, and i asked some of them a short time ago with the director of the national weather service, jack hayes. jack hayes welcome, what's happening in the upper atmosphere to cause what, for some parts of the country, are the worst storms in merely 80 year approximates? >> i would say, ray, it's both upper atmosphere and lower atmosphere. if i might start with the lower atmosphere. what we had this past week was a prolonged period of southerly flow off the gulf bringing warm, humid air not southern tier of the united states, east of the mississippi river. if you combine that with a strong jet stream that originated up in the canadian region and you bring that into juxtaposition, you focus account energy and then you have a triggering mechanism with the heat and the funnel system that was slowly moving across that set off the outbreak that we saw that went from arkansas all the way to georgia and up into virginia. >> suarez: are there any variables that make one year relatively calm and another one catastrophic? >> that's really the $64 question. 1,800 tornadoes and the very i think 2008, we saw nearly 1,800 tornadoes and the very next year when we were all prepared for an active season we saw far less than that. so you are going to see a natural variability from year- to-year. it's an area, i think, prime for research to understand what causes one year to be active and one year not. >> suarez: can you can use observed patterns, the history of other years and look at the beginning of a spring and say oh this looks like it's shaping up to be a bad one. >> we do do that. we have a climate prediction center that attempts to look at seasonal predictions. in some areas where we have strong signals-- la nina or el nino-- we can find statistical correlation and we can provide an outlook. i think this spring, in particular, we were alerting the northern tier of the united states as early as november, december that we expected march and early april floods. and you're seeing that red river in the north now, the ohio river valley, up even as far as new york. >> suarez: do you have to be careful when warning people not to get into the "boy who cried wolf" syndrome? if you see some variables meshing in a certain way, sending them to their basements and then having nothing happen? >> absolutely. we monitor our false alarm ratio. i will tell you, though, if we're sitting on the fence and we see a threat, the philosophy that we've espoused in our policies, the culture we've tried to create in our weather forecast is one that says i would rather push the button on the warning and protect americans, have them go to basements, and save a life as opposed to miss an event. >> we've had this terrible record in april. do we know what may holds? can we look at whether patterns and say it's going to be continue to be a turbulent spring? >> i think that that is where our skill... you're pushing our skill to the max. i think our outlook says that expect an active may. traditionally, may is our most active month, and it does concern us, the large number of tornadoes that we've seen in the month of april-- we had a record-setting season in 2004. we've had 835 tornadoes already this year. the record-setting season was 1,817 in 2004. and with may being typically the most active month, the question i think we have to ask ourselves-- are we going to have a record-setting year in 2011? >> a scientist at the national severe storms laboratory in norman, oklahoma, said there is a pretty good chance that some of these storms, the tornadoes were a mile wide on the ground for tens of miles and had wind speeds over 200 miles an hour. now, normally, tornadoes are bad, but they're not nearly that bad. what makes them so powerful this time around? >> well, i think the prolonged stretch of warm, humid air from the gulf set in place a couple of factors, the presence of strong jet stream, you had a unstable atmosphere over a prolonged period of time and when we triggered it, it is certainly abnormal to see the kinds of tornadoes we saw but it is not unheard of. we had one report of an ef 5 tornado and that does say over 200-mile-per-hour winds. we've had those before, kansas, oklahoma, so they do occur. they are rare. when they occur they tend to be well defined features and stay on the ground for a period of time. >> suarez: do we have better technology for getting at least a little more notice of when things are going to be that bad? >> absolutely. in fact, i will say we have geo- stationery satellites, polar orbiting satellites. five days before these storms hit the south, we picked up enough conditions out over the gulf with our polar-orbiting satellites that our models were able to run and project into the future. we let communities know three days before that there was a moderate risk of very threatening tornadic situation occurring before the area that was hit. the midnight before the event occurred, we raised it to a high risk. so that was over 12 hours before the first thunderstorm formed in mississippi, alabama, arkansas. and so the technology that we have-- satellites, radars-- we have a doppler radar that we put in place in the late '80s, early 1990s that allow us to see in the storms and see circulation begin to form before tornadoes actually form. >> suarez: jack hayes, director of the national weather services, thanks for joining us. >> thank you. >> warner: still to come on the newshour: extensive coverage of that royal marriage in london; plus shields and brooks. but first, the other news of the day. here's hari sreenivasan. >> sreenivasan: thousands of people in syria defied a government crackdown today to stage protests across the country. a human rights group inside syria reported security forces shot and killed at least 62 people. we have a report narrated by kylie morris of independent television news. >> reporter: under fire, in the pro-democracy stronghold of deraa, protesters attempt to drag to safety the body of a wounded man. it's rare footage from a town under siege. one eyewitness told us the army opened fire when people from surrounding villages marched to the city gates. doctors speak of scores of bodies. but deraa is shut down and details are difficult to confirm. an army division occupied it five days ago, killing as many as 50 people then. our eyewitness spoke of residents imprisoned in their own homes, with electricity cut and food supplies running short. even the u.n.'s patience is wearing thin, the human rights commission agreeing a resolution condemning the assad regime. >> in this context, i should like to underscore that any official ordering or undertaking of attacks against the civilian population can be held criminally accountable. >> reporter: not only the u.n., but the u.s. and e.u. now also considering fresh sanctions against the assad government, encouraged perhaps by the massive demonstrations nationwide today. security forces fought back with tear gas when as many as 10,000 marched through the old district of damascus. it's the biggest protest in the city since demonstrations began six weeks ago. demonstrators defied the regime's will across the capital and beyond. the republican guard patrolled the streets, closing roads across damascus, but still, protests erupted after friday prayers across a number of suburbs. there were demonstrations, too, in the central cities of homs and hama; banias on the mediterranean coast, as well as latakia; and al qamishly in the country's far east. not only declaring their opposition to the assad regime, but also their solidarity with their countrymen in the besieged city of deraa. despite the government's brutal crackdown, no sign anywhere that the syrian people have lost their appetite for change. >> sreenivasan: in washington, the obama administration announced new sanctio