Updated 7:33 pm ET
MOORE, Okla. The National Weather Service's damage survey found that the monster tornado that wreaked havoc on an Oklahoma City suburb is the most powerful type of tornado there is: an EF5.
According to the Enhanced Fujita scale and the NWS, EF5 tornadoes and have winds over 200 mph -- enough to reduce well-constructed houses into splintered rubble and generate automobile-sized missiles. In this case, it reached a maximum 210 mph and covered a path 17 miles long and 1.3 miles wide for 50 minutes. The Oklahoma insurance commissioner said the damage is estimated to cost a total of $3 billion.
The news came as the search for survivors in Moore, Okla., began to wrap up. Fire Chief Gary Bird said Tuesday that he's "98 percent sure" there are no more survivors or bodies to recover under the rubble in the city.
Bird says every damaged home has been searched at least once, and that his goal is to conduct three searches of each location just to be sure. He's hopeful the work could be completed by nightfall, though heavy rains have slowed efforts and soaked debris piles.
10 Photos
[h=3]Deadliest U.S. tornadoes[/h]
17 Photos
[h=3]Tornado's destructive path[/h]
Play Video
[h=3]Tornado aftermath: "It's raining pieces of houses"[/h]
Play Video
[h=3]Up-close video of Moore, Okla., tornado[/h]
At least 24 people were killed in the twister, including at least eight children. One of the most hard-hit buildings was an Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore, where police spokesman Jeremy Lewis said seven children died under a collapsed wall. Another child was killed at Briarwood Elementary School in Oklahoma City.
Nineteen of the total fatalities were in Moore; five were in Oklahoma City. About 200 people have been pulled from the rubble, and 25 percent of the homes in more were destroyed, Lewis said. Over 300 people are injured.
"We will rebuild and we will regain our strength," said Fallin, who went on a flyover of the area and described it as "hard to look at."
Many houses, she said, have "just been taken away, they're just sticks and bricks."
Amy Elliott, a spokeswoman for the medical examiner, said an incorrect number of fatalities were originally reported because she believes some victims were counted twice in the early chaos of the storm that struck Monday afternoon. Downed communication lines and problems sharing information with officers exacerbated the problem, she said.
Hospital officials say they've treated more than 200 patients, including dozens of children. About 20 patients remained at one hospital Tuesday, but it wasn't clear how many patients remained hospitalized at another facility. Spokeswoman Brooke Cayot says Integris Southwest Medical Center has seen 90 patients, including five children who have been released. About 20 people remain hospitalized there.
In Washington, President Barack Obama signed a major disaster declaration and pledged urgent government help for Oklahoma Tuesday in the wake of "one of the most destructive" storms in the nation's history.
"In an instant neighborhoods were destroyed, dozens of people lost their lives, many more were injured," Obama said from the White House State Dining Room. "Among the victims were young children trying to take shelter in the safest place they knew - their school."
The president added that the town of Moore "needs to get everything it needs right away."
The path of Monday's tornado in Moore County, Oklahoma
/ CBS News
Play Video
[h=3]Couple hiding in bathtub saved by Okla. first responders[/h]
Play Video
[h=3]Former Okla. gov: Need to reconsider our "shelter-in-place" protocol[/h]
Play Video
[h=3]Moore mayor: Six neighborhoods now "nothing but slabs"[/h]
The ferocious storm -- less than 1 percent of all tornadoes reach such wind speeds -- ripped through the suburb of Moore in the Midwest region known as Tornado Alley. Severe weather warnings were posted in much of the region Tuesday morning.
The storm laid waste to scores of buildings in Moore, a community of 56,000 people about 10 miles south of Oklahoma City. Block after block lay in ruins. Homes were crushed into piles of broken wood. Cars and trucks were left crumpled on the roadside. Rescuers launched a desperate rescue effort at the two elementary schools, pulling children from heaps of debris and carrying them to a triage center.
Emergency crews were having trouble navigating neighborhoods because the devastation is so complete, and there are no street signs left standing, Fallin added.
At Plaza Towers Elementary, the storm ripped off the roof, knocked down walls and turned the playground into a mass of twisted plastic and metal as students and teachers huddled in hallways and bathrooms.
17 Photos
[h=3]Tornado's destructive path[/h]
Seven of the nine dead children were killed at the school, but several students were pulled alive from under a collapsed wall and other heaps of mangled debris. Rescue workers passed the survivors down a human chain of parents and neighborhood volunteers. Parents carried children in their arms to a triage center in the parking lot. Some students looked dazed, others terrified.
Isabela Rojas, 7, told CBS News what she heard and saw. "I was hanging on," she said. "All the dirt that got in my eyes and on my clothes ... all of it was on top of us. The teacher got stuck, so somebody had to help her because the desks were on her leg."
Teachers used their bodies to cover their students. Jennifer Doan tearfully recalled from her hospital bed how scared one of the students were. She is recovering from a fractured sternum and spine.
"I said to keep calm, that [rescuers] would come," Doan told CBS News' Vinita Nair. "He just kept telling me that he couldn't breathe and he didn't want to die.
Nine-year-old Jenae Hornsby was one of the Peak Tower students who didn't make it. Her father Joshua, raced to the school in his car, but the building was already destroyed by the time he got there.
"When I hit the corner, where I could see the school, the school was gone," he told correspondent Mark Strassman. "And my heart just sank."
Jenae Hornsby
/ CBS News/Personal Photo
He got a much-dreaded call from the medical examiner 8:30 this morning.
"To come to terms with that, that I won't be able to spend no more Sunday dinners with her, I'll have no more time in the Church with her, all that stuff we used to do," said her grandmother, Yolanda, through tears. "And that smile. That smile."
Many parents of missing schoolchildren initially came to St. Andrews United Methodist Church, which had been set up as a meeting site. But only high school students were brought to the church, causing confusion and frustration among parents of students enrolled at Plaza Towers. They were redirected to a Baptist church several miles away.
"It was very emotional -- some people just holding on to each other, crying because they couldn't find a child; some people being angry and expressing it verbally" by shouting at one another, said D.A. Bennett, senior pastor at St. Andrews.
Play Video
[h=3]School children among Okla. tornado casualties[/h]
Play Video
[h=3]Oklahoma mom on destroyed school: Parents' worst nightmare[/h]
After hearing that the tornado was headed toward another school called Briarwood Elementary, David Wheeler left work and drove 100 mph through blinding rain and gusting wind to find his 8-year-old son, Gabriel. When he got to the school site, "it was like the earth was wiped clean, like the grass was just sheared off," Wheeler said.
Eventually, he found Gabriel, sitting with the teacher who had protected him. His back was cut and bruised and gravel was embedded in his head -- but he was alive. As the tornado approached, students at Briarwood were initially sent to the halls, but a third-grade teacher -- whom Wheeler identified as Julie Simon -- thought it didn't look safe and so ushered the children into a closet, he said.
The teacher shielded Gabriel with her arms and held him down as the tornado collapsed the roof and starting lifting students upward with a pull so strong that it sucked the glasses off their faces, Wheeler said.
"She saved their lives by putting them in a closet and holding their heads down," Wheeler said.
The tornado also grazed a theater, and leveled countless homes. Authorities were still trying to determine the full scope of the damage.
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MOORE, Okla. The National Weather Service's damage survey found that the monster tornado that wreaked havoc on an Oklahoma City suburb is the most powerful type of tornado there is: an EF5.
According to the Enhanced Fujita scale and the NWS, EF5 tornadoes and have winds over 200 mph -- enough to reduce well-constructed houses into splintered rubble and generate automobile-sized missiles. In this case, it reached a maximum 210 mph and covered a path 17 miles long and 1.3 miles wide for 50 minutes. The Oklahoma insurance commissioner said the damage is estimated to cost a total of $3 billion.
The news came as the search for survivors in Moore, Okla., began to wrap up. Fire Chief Gary Bird said Tuesday that he's "98 percent sure" there are no more survivors or bodies to recover under the rubble in the city.
Bird says every damaged home has been searched at least once, and that his goal is to conduct three searches of each location just to be sure. He's hopeful the work could be completed by nightfall, though heavy rains have slowed efforts and soaked debris piles.
[h=3]Deadliest U.S. tornadoes[/h]
[h=3]Tornado's destructive path[/h]
[h=3]Tornado aftermath: "It's raining pieces of houses"[/h]
[h=3]Up-close video of Moore, Okla., tornado[/h]
At least 24 people were killed in the twister, including at least eight children. One of the most hard-hit buildings was an Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore, where police spokesman Jeremy Lewis said seven children died under a collapsed wall. Another child was killed at Briarwood Elementary School in Oklahoma City.
Nineteen of the total fatalities were in Moore; five were in Oklahoma City. About 200 people have been pulled from the rubble, and 25 percent of the homes in more were destroyed, Lewis said. Over 300 people are injured.
"We will rebuild and we will regain our strength," said Fallin, who went on a flyover of the area and described it as "hard to look at."
Many houses, she said, have "just been taken away, they're just sticks and bricks."
Amy Elliott, a spokeswoman for the medical examiner, said an incorrect number of fatalities were originally reported because she believes some victims were counted twice in the early chaos of the storm that struck Monday afternoon. Downed communication lines and problems sharing information with officers exacerbated the problem, she said.
Hospital officials say they've treated more than 200 patients, including dozens of children. About 20 patients remained at one hospital Tuesday, but it wasn't clear how many patients remained hospitalized at another facility. Spokeswoman Brooke Cayot says Integris Southwest Medical Center has seen 90 patients, including five children who have been released. About 20 people remain hospitalized there.
In Washington, President Barack Obama signed a major disaster declaration and pledged urgent government help for Oklahoma Tuesday in the wake of "one of the most destructive" storms in the nation's history.
"In an instant neighborhoods were destroyed, dozens of people lost their lives, many more were injured," Obama said from the White House State Dining Room. "Among the victims were young children trying to take shelter in the safest place they knew - their school."
The president added that the town of Moore "needs to get everything it needs right away."
/ CBS News
[h=3]Couple hiding in bathtub saved by Okla. first responders[/h]
[h=3]Former Okla. gov: Need to reconsider our "shelter-in-place" protocol[/h]
[h=3]Moore mayor: Six neighborhoods now "nothing but slabs"[/h]
The ferocious storm -- less than 1 percent of all tornadoes reach such wind speeds -- ripped through the suburb of Moore in the Midwest region known as Tornado Alley. Severe weather warnings were posted in much of the region Tuesday morning.
The storm laid waste to scores of buildings in Moore, a community of 56,000 people about 10 miles south of Oklahoma City. Block after block lay in ruins. Homes were crushed into piles of broken wood. Cars and trucks were left crumpled on the roadside. Rescuers launched a desperate rescue effort at the two elementary schools, pulling children from heaps of debris and carrying them to a triage center.
Emergency crews were having trouble navigating neighborhoods because the devastation is so complete, and there are no street signs left standing, Fallin added.
At Plaza Towers Elementary, the storm ripped off the roof, knocked down walls and turned the playground into a mass of twisted plastic and metal as students and teachers huddled in hallways and bathrooms.
[h=3]Tornado's destructive path[/h]
Seven of the nine dead children were killed at the school, but several students were pulled alive from under a collapsed wall and other heaps of mangled debris. Rescue workers passed the survivors down a human chain of parents and neighborhood volunteers. Parents carried children in their arms to a triage center in the parking lot. Some students looked dazed, others terrified.
Isabela Rojas, 7, told CBS News what she heard and saw. "I was hanging on," she said. "All the dirt that got in my eyes and on my clothes ... all of it was on top of us. The teacher got stuck, so somebody had to help her because the desks were on her leg."
Teachers used their bodies to cover their students. Jennifer Doan tearfully recalled from her hospital bed how scared one of the students were. She is recovering from a fractured sternum and spine.
"I said to keep calm, that [rescuers] would come," Doan told CBS News' Vinita Nair. "He just kept telling me that he couldn't breathe and he didn't want to die.
Nine-year-old Jenae Hornsby was one of the Peak Tower students who didn't make it. Her father Joshua, raced to the school in his car, but the building was already destroyed by the time he got there.
"When I hit the corner, where I could see the school, the school was gone," he told correspondent Mark Strassman. "And my heart just sank."
/ CBS News/Personal Photo
He got a much-dreaded call from the medical examiner 8:30 this morning.
"To come to terms with that, that I won't be able to spend no more Sunday dinners with her, I'll have no more time in the Church with her, all that stuff we used to do," said her grandmother, Yolanda, through tears. "And that smile. That smile."
Many parents of missing schoolchildren initially came to St. Andrews United Methodist Church, which had been set up as a meeting site. But only high school students were brought to the church, causing confusion and frustration among parents of students enrolled at Plaza Towers. They were redirected to a Baptist church several miles away.
"It was very emotional -- some people just holding on to each other, crying because they couldn't find a child; some people being angry and expressing it verbally" by shouting at one another, said D.A. Bennett, senior pastor at St. Andrews.
[h=3]School children among Okla. tornado casualties[/h]
[h=3]Oklahoma mom on destroyed school: Parents' worst nightmare[/h]
After hearing that the tornado was headed toward another school called Briarwood Elementary, David Wheeler left work and drove 100 mph through blinding rain and gusting wind to find his 8-year-old son, Gabriel. When he got to the school site, "it was like the earth was wiped clean, like the grass was just sheared off," Wheeler said.
Eventually, he found Gabriel, sitting with the teacher who had protected him. His back was cut and bruised and gravel was embedded in his head -- but he was alive. As the tornado approached, students at Briarwood were initially sent to the halls, but a third-grade teacher -- whom Wheeler identified as Julie Simon -- thought it didn't look safe and so ushered the children into a closet, he said.
The teacher shielded Gabriel with her arms and held him down as the tornado collapsed the roof and starting lifting students upward with a pull so strong that it sucked the glasses off their faces, Wheeler said.
"She saved their lives by putting them in a closet and holding their heads down," Wheeler said.
The tornado also grazed a theater, and leveled countless homes. Authorities were still trying to determine the full scope of the damage.
1/2