{"id":34883,"date":"2013-05-21T03:08:10","date_gmt":"2013-05-21T02:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/death-toll-continues-to-rise-in-devastating-oklahoma-tornado\/34883\/"},"modified":"2013-05-21T03:08:10","modified_gmt":"2013-05-21T02:08:10","slug":"death-toll-continues-to-rise-in-devastating-oklahoma-tornado","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/death-toll-continues-to-rise-in-devastating-oklahoma-tornado\/","title":{"rendered":"Death Toll Continues to Rise in Devastating Oklahoma Tornado"},"content":{"rendered":"

May 20, 2013<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>
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WASHINGTON \u2013 At least 37 people were killed when a powerful tornado with winds of up to 200 miles (320 kilometers) per hour pulverized an Oklahoma City suburb, hitting at least two schools and wiping out blocks of homes. [Editor’s note: since publication the AP has reported<\/a> the death toll is at 51.] <\/p>\n

The Oklahoma medical examiner’s office gave the latest death toll, which was carried by all the major US television networks, which said the number of fatalities was expected to rise. <\/p>\n

“Our first responders are stretched,” Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett told CNN. “The state, the National Guard are going to be involved.” <\/p>\n

Reporters for KFOR-TV saw pupils as young as nine being “pulled out” of the school in Moore, a residential community of 55,000 just south of Oklahoma’s state capital. <\/p>\n

Anxious parents were being kept at a distance while search and rescue workers scrambled to free the pupils. <\/p>\n

A second elementary school, Briarwood, was also hit but did not immediately appear to have sustained casualties. Early reports indicated that many students survived. <\/p>\n

From its news helicopter, KFOR’s cameras captured scenes of widespread destruction, with street after street of single-story homes in Moore stripped of their roofs and cars piled atop each other like toys. <\/p>\n

Utility lines were down and gas lines exposed, triggering localized fires. The Moore Medical Center was evacuated after it sustained damage, a spokeswoman for the hospital told CNN. <\/p>\n

The National Guard was called out to help rescue efforts. <\/p>\n

Storm spotters estimated the wedge-shaped tornado, which struck in mid-afternoon, to be as big as two miles (3.2 kilometers) wide. It briefly dissipated, only to recycle to the east, threatening the town of Meeker. <\/p>\n

“We anticipate that these storms are going to continue to build around Oklahoma,” a grim Governor Mary Fallin told CNN, while the National Weather Service urged residents to take cover. <\/p>\n

On Twitter, the National Weather Service gave the tornado a preliminary rating of EF-4, indicating that it packed winds of 166 to 200 miles per hour (267-322 km\/h) — more severe than a category five hurricane. <\/p>\n

In downtown Oklahoma City, tornado sirens went off at least three times Monday afternoon, and the Interstate 35 highway — a busy north-south artery through the American heartland — was closed to all but emergency vehicles. <\/p>\n

In Moore, live images from KFOR showed people wandering among the debris and even a couple of untethered horses from a local stables that somehow managed to survive the punishing storm. <\/p>\n

“I had no idea it was coming,” said a stable worker, who told how he survived the “unbearably loud” twister by taking cover in one of the stalls. <\/p>\n

Monday’s tornado followed roughly the same west-to-east track as a May 1999 twister that killed 44 people, injured hundreds more and destroyed thousands of homes in Moore and the south of Oklahoma City. <\/p>\n

Tornadoes frequently touch down on Oklahoma’s wide open plains, but the fact that Monday’s twister struck a populated urban area raised fears of a high casualty toll. <\/p>\n

Because of the hard ground, few homes are built with basements in which residents can take cover. <\/p>\n

Oklahoma City lies well inside the so-called “Tornado Alley” stretching from South Dakota to central Texas that is particularly vulnerable to tornadoes. <\/p>\n

On Sunday, a powerful storm system churning through the US Midwest spawned tornadoes in Iowa, Kansas and Oklahoma, destroying homes and killing at least two people, US media reported. <\/p>\n

Fallin declared a state of emergency Sunday for 16 Oklahoma counties due to tornados, severe storms and flooding over the weekend. <\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on : AlterNet<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

May 20, 2013 \u00a0| Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. WASHINGTON \u2013 At least 37 people were killed when a powerful tornado with winds of up to 200 miles (320 kilometers) per hour pulverized an Oklahoma City suburb, hitting at least two schools and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-34883","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34883\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}