ba buena right off the freeway. we will don't to update the story on our 6:30. the state of emergency here in hard-hit moore, oklahoma. miles of devastation after a ous tornado decimated everything in its path. >> it's about a mile right at our tail. >> a catastrophic rampage for 17 miles on the ground. right now rescue teams are still searching for missing people. at least 24 are confirmed dead. hundreds more are injured. and many of them children who were pulled from an elementary school that took a direct hit. tonight the moment of impact here. the victims and the survivors. friends and neighbors now overwhelmed by tragedy, and the severe weather keeps on coming. we have an active and dangerous situation in seven separate states for tens of millions of americans.

our team is here and on the ground, and our special coverage begins now. >> announcer: "devastation in oklahoma." this is "nbc nightly news" with brian williams reporting tonight from moore, oklahoma. well, good evening from what has to be the saddest place on earth, the most torn-up place on earth, and that's the city of moore, oklahoma. we're south of oklahoma city, and today we had our suspicions and worst fears realized. we learned today officially what tore through here yesterday afternoon was, in fact, an ef-5 tornado. we got this video in today of the inception of the tornado. its very beginning as it started to march along its path. that means -- that category mean these winds hit between 200, 210 miles an hour. the base of this storm now confirmed to be at its widest point, 1.3 miles wide on the ground.

the path was 17 miles long, 17 miles of real estate. it was on the ground for 40 minutes. and a word about the death toll having fluctuated up and down overnight and into today. it stands right now confirmed at 24. and sadly, that number includes at least 9 children. 237 people are listed as injured. the insurance claims likely topping $1 billion, but luckily there will be time to discuss all of that. and even as we stand here tonight amid all this, severe weather is still in the news this evening. we have a combination of watches and warnings over seven separate states tonight, though we're happy to report it looks like the dallas/ft. worth metroplex will avoid the worst of the severe weather. first off, to start our coverage, a very basic question, what happened here to cause all this? lester holt, part of our team

here with us to start off our coverage. lester, let's begin with this death toll. a lot of americans went to bed last night hearing a number 51, some of them 91. a lot of us woke up this morning to see it downgraded to 24. we talk about the fog of war in situations like this. is that what happened? >> it looks like a war zone and it was, in fact, a fog of war. the chaos and confusion of those early hours of a hectic search and rescue operation. meantime, today the first victim identities were released, that of a little 9-year-old girl killed in her school. today new images of the storm as it barreled into moore, reinforcing what everyone here is saying -- >> the whole roof just came off. >> reporter: this one was beyond anything they can remember. >> oh, my god! >> reporter: survivors emerged from shelter into an alien world of utter destruction. >> the lord giveth, and the lord taketh away. >> reporter: aided by cadaver

dogs, today's searchers went door to door. the twister is responsible for at least 24 deaths including 9 children. 7 of them were still inside plaza towers elementary school. among them 9-year-old janae hornsby. these sisters took their own children from the school just minutes before the tornado hit. >> we had turned on the radio in the car, and they said something about a child. i can't even remember her name. that she's alive. she's at a hospital in norman. and i told my daughter, mia, is that your friend? she started crying. mom, that's my friend. but she's alive? she's alive. >> reporter: in 40 petrifying minutes the landscape of this suburban town was changed forever. >> i have blood in my hair from my friend. she was on top of me. she was bleeding because she got hit pretty hard. >> reporter: at this 7-eleven, four bodies were recovered today including a 3-month-old baby. the moore medical center, where

patients were evacuated, now looks like this. entrances blocked with crumbled cars tossed during the storm. this neighborhood once dotted with trees, swimming pools and cul-de-sacs now completely obliterated, unrecognizable. the twister's devastating path 17 miles long. >> the streets are just gone. the signs are just gone. so we've been working very hard to identify various areas of need. >> there it is. it's a mile right there. >> reporter: john welch, pilot reporter for kfor tv's chopper 4 watched the horror unfold. >> look at that. it's just like a lawn mower went right through. >> reporter: today we surveyed the damage. >> this was the heart of the search yesterday. >> reporter: its path was eerily reminiscent of that taken by a record-setting tornado that hit here 14 years ago. that twister had speeds of more than 300 miles per hour, damaged more than 8,000 homes and killed at least 36. that 1999 tornado took don

bessinger's fence. this one took his home. he rode out the assault in a neighbor's storm shelter. what was it like when you were in there? could you hear it? >> it was loud. everything was banging against the doors and it was the houses breaking apart hitting the door. we thought the door was going to fly off, and the massive debris hit. so we made it to the corner of the storm shelter because we thought the door was going to leave. >> reporter: today homeowners trickled back into destroyed neighborhoods starting with the small pieces, as they confronted the big task of putting their lives back together. and we mention that fluctuating number of confirmed dead. officials say it could change again because there are still those unaccounted for, brian, as the search goes on. and they point out we could see as many as 20,000 people displaced by all this. >> absolutely. and there's so much of this, this is going to be a long haul that begins with a grid and house-by-house searches, which

have not yet all been completed. lester holt starting off our coverage here tonight. lester, thanks. if you were watching our special coverage yesterday in the immediate aftermath of this tornado, then you know it took only an hour or two for a kind of sick feeling to arrive in this neighborhood. what about the elementary school? there was that dire first report that upwards of 75 students and faculty might be trapped, might be unaccounted for. luckily those dire numbers did not materialize, but sadly there has well been more than enough bad news to go around at that school. kate snow has been there for us today. kate, good evening. >> reporter: brian, good evening to you. there were two schools that were actually in the direct path of this tornado. one of them, luckily, had no fatalities that we know of so far. but the other, at least seven fatalities that we know of, and this was a week that was supposed to be filled with celebration. last week at school, graduation. tomorrow was superkids day at the school. instead they're mourning their

classmates. inside the walls of the plaza towers elementary school, 500 students were counting down the days in their final week of class, but in just a matter of minutes, their campus went from looking like this to this. classrooms completely obliterated, an auditorium caved in. parents of other students tell nbc news children were in that auditorium. >> we've seen it from the air. this is it right here behind me as i step out of the way, and let joe zoom in. this is the front of plaza towers elementary school. this school is basically gone. >> reporter: in the hours after the tornado, dramatic images, young children were rescued, and with darkness, the search for survivors continued. some children had escaped from harm. their parents had picked them up just before the school went on lockdown monday, but the majority stayed inside as they practiced in drills many times. math teacher rhonda crosswhite was helping her sixth graders with an end of school game when the principal came over the loudspeaker and told them to go to the hallway. damian kline is a fourth grader.

>> she told us all to just get your math book or your bag. i already had my bag. then we went in the hall. >> reporter: why did she tell you to get a math book or a bag? >> so we could put it over our head. >> reporter: a fifth grade teacher saw the funnel cloud approaching and yelled for everyone to leave the hallway and get into closets or bathrooms. >> he said you've got to get them in there. i said, okay, i'll get them in. i'll stay out here. he said, you're getting in there, too. >> reporter: she was in a bathroom stall crouched over four children, and she did what teachers do. >> i remember the little boy saying i love you, miss crosswhite. please don't let me die with you. we are not dying today. we are not dying today. quit saying that. and i did the teacher thing that we're probably not supposed to do, i prayed, and i prayed out loud. >> what did you say? >> i said, god please don't take these kids today. >> reporter: the ceiling crashed down on them, but the walls still stood. when it was quiet again, she sent a small boy to climb up the bathroom wall and look out. >> and he got up there, and he

looked down at me, and he said, there's nothing left. >> reporter: damian was in the same bathroom crouched under a sink. how loud was it? >> it was pretty loud. >> reporter: were you scared? >> mm-hmm. there was a bunch of people screaming. we could hear them from the girls restroom. >> reporter: his mom spent an anxious hour wondering if her little boy was still alive, and now she wonders why the school didn't have a better shelter plan. >> well, i definitely think every school in oklahoma should have an underground shelter. it shouldn't take a tornado this size and this many kids hurt, missing and lost their lives to realize that they need underground shelters. >> reporter: it's actually remarkable how many children did get out of this school. and, brian, miss crosswhite was telling us that they had sort of a firemen's brigade going with adults helping some of the kids out of the school, walking over a bookcase, using it as stairs and pass them along from one adult to the next to get them to safety.

but we've been told how horrible the scene was with children lying everywhere, injured children, a lot of parents could barely take it. >> two issues emerged there, the bravery of the teachers and, second, this issue of why there wasn't a shelter there. and we're actually going to take that on later in the broadcast. kate, thanks for your reporting here today on the ground. again, if you were with us when this news first broke yesterday right on through "nbc nightly news" last night, you heard our interview, a very early tentative interview by phone with the mayor of moore, oklahoma. we asked him at the time a question so many people have, where do you begin? well, we're happy to welcome mayor glenn lewis here with us tonight. mr. mayor, thank you for making time. let's use this house as an example. i found a photograph of two young women on the front yard, but i also know -- i've covered a lot of these. this could be from 12 miles away. >> right. >> this woman is said to have several young children at home. they think she got out. they're not sure.

this is one house in your town. where do you begin? >> probably at the very beginning where it started right back over here at plaza towers. that's kind of ground zero. it actually started across the street in oklahoma city. briarwood elementary is in oklahoma city. and it's just as devastated as plaza towers. they actually had more of a safe room. plaza towers is one of the older schools. the older schools don't have them. all the new schools that are built have safe rooms. unfortunately, that one didn't. >> we should probably -- for people who don't know moore, oklahoma, we should probably emphasize in plain english, not a whole lot of people getting rich here. this is a working class town. >> yes, sir. most of the people here are schoolteachers or state employees or federal employees. they work for the federal government usually at tinkerfield or faa. >> there is almost a faith-based fema here in oklahoma. there's actual fema here in oklahoma. there are private donors, and i've been assured all day that so many people will be lining up to take care of the good people

who have been hit. >> yes. >> you're going to count on that to rebuild this city yet again after '99. >> yes, sir. that is for a fact. we will rebuild it. we've already started the plans. we actually started the process. if you look over across the street at the hospital over there, they've started to clean up already. warren peters already cleaned up their parking lot. they're working on it. there's so many trucks they can't get to it. we've started the process already. we started putting up street signs. that's the first thing you have to do. people say, why do you do street signs first? it's like you take care of the people that are injured, then you start putting up the street signs. >> why? >> well, you can't find where you're at. if you lived here for 30 years, you don't know what street is. >> it doesn't look like home. >> the house doesn't look the same either. >> i just wanted to join everybody watching wish you good luck. thank you for spending time with us tonight. mayor glenn lewis here in moore, oklahoma. now, let's talk about the weather event that caused all this. we're standing in front of the

wreckage of just one of these residential homes. weather channel meteorologist our old friend jim cantore is here with us. jim, you and i were talking before about a statistic that's starting to surface today that the sheer energy, the output of this storm equaled the bomb ignited in hiroshima. >> when you think about that blast, certainly that is an amazing analogy. i mean you just have tons of debris everywhere. brian, unrecognizable. it's hard to imagine anyone could survive in this. >> now, safe rooms. let's talk about it and let's talk about what this region needs to do. >> they do. i mean, if we're going to put our kids in a hall and teach them how to crouch and hold their hands over their head, we have to have a place that's not going to be blown apart. we have to have buildings that can sustain the type of damage that they're used to here, obviously. we're talking about 200-mile-per-hour winds. that's the first thing and obviously a big thing they need to address. people's homes. i was down in tuscaloosa, as were you, and after the 27, april 2011 outbreak, we saw them

build back homes for $75,000 with safe rooms. >> with shelters. >> with safe rooms in them. so this is not an undoable thing. >> now, bring us up to date. we mentioned seven different states have watches and warnings. tonight as we stand here talking -- >> a week and a half ago the atmosphere decided we're going to pull a switch, and all of a sudden the tornado drought is over and you've seen the results of that. what we're looking at tonight is thunderstorms all the way really from new york and connecticut on down through tennessee. shreveport is certainly going to face some of these thunderstorms tonight, austin, texas, memphis tennessee, as well. tornado watches. >> jim cantore, thank you for being part of the coverage. >> always, always. >> we'll take a break in our coverage. when we come back, we're going to talk more about this building code and shelter issue here in this devastated town of moore, oklahoma.

welcome back.

here in the state of oklahoma, the expression "this hard land" comes to mind, and it's true in more ways than one. when you think about it, the national conference of tornado preparation is held in oklahoma city, and they do that every year for a reason. this weather is a surprise to no one, and for the most part they're ready for it when it comes. but nationwide, especially people on both coasts are asking why aren't there more shelters, cellars, basements? why aren't there more safe houses within houses across this region given the weather here? our report on that tonight from nbc's tom costello. >> reporter: yet another devastating tornado, and so many people are asking, why aren't there more basements in the very place they need them most, tornado alley, and why aren't there more tornado shelters? many of those who managed to get underground survived. >> it ripped open the door, and

it -- just glass and debris started slamming on us. we thought we were dead, to be honest. >> reporter: basements are not common in oklahoma because the soil, heavy with clay and water, makes anything underground prone to flooding and mold. so most homes are built on a concrete slab. and most homes can only withstand 90-mile-per-hour winds, not 200. >> we just don't design homes on the interior of this country to withstand the winds the same way they would do along the coast. >> reporter: but building a safe room for a shelter is a different matter. a residential safe room can be installed in the ground or inside the home itself. a reinforced box almost like a bank vault but built to fema tornado standards, but they cost 8,000 to $10,000 each. oklahoma has a lottery to decide who gets state help to pay for them. last year 500 homeowners were chosen out of 16,000 applicants. separately, the city of moore was applying for $2 million in federal aid to help build safe rooms in 800 homes, but the city complained that the program was

delayed because fema standards were, quote, a constantly changing target. fema says it's looking into what caused the delay. so why weren't schools better prepared? >> i know certainly yesterday raised a lot of questions with people, why don't schools have storm shelters? >> reporter: today state officials said 100 schools do have safe rooms, but they're expensive. live the fema estimate, $1.4 million per school. >> when you have a limited number of funds, you set priorities on which schools you do want to ask for. not a matter they would be left out for any reason. it was a matter they hadn't been brought forward yet. >> reporter: the town of moore had not built any community tornado shelters because the town said it faced only a 1% to 2% chance of a tornado ever hitting on any spring day. tom costello, nbc news. a lot of tough questions being asked here today. and we'll be back with more from here right after this. for our families...

our neighbors... and our communities... america's beverage companies have created... a wide range of new choices. developing smaller portion sizes and more.. low and no-calorie beverages... adding clear calorie labels so you know... exactly what you're choosing... and in schools, replacing full-calorie soft drinks... with lower-calorie options. with more choices and fewer calories... america's beverage companies are delivering.

back here in moore, oklahoma, let's spend a moment talking about the true first responders, the rescue teams, the national guard. remember, when they walk through areas like this, they're walking through home. their story tonight from nbc's gabe gutierrez. >> reporter: on a soggy, miserable afternoon in oklahoma, the search for survivors hit home. >> words can't describe everything we have seen right now. >> reporter: this is the oklahoma national guard, more than 200 soldiers and airmen called to duty. around the clock frantic search after the massive twister. >> as a father of two young elementary students, it hurts knowing that there are children lost. >> reporter: sergeant mike bell is an army reservist. he grew up in this state and was part of the search and rescue team 14 years ago during another huge twister. >> a thousand times worse. it's like a war zone. >> reporter: the rescue and

recovery effort is not limited to those in uniform. 15-year-old morgan smith rode out the storm in an underground shelter. when she emerged, a neighbor was trapped in the debris across the street. >> me and my mom ran across the street and came over here. and we dug her out of like where that red thing is, she was down right behind that. >> reporter: rescuers have now scoured this neighborhood at least twice. on this pass all they find is empty homes. sergeant mike bell says he had to be here. this is personal. this is home. >> as an oklahoman, it hurts. >> reporter: his stake changed forever. gabe gutierrez, nbc news, moore, oklahoma. when we come back, information for all those looking to help the folks here.

>> a teacher saved my life. we've tried to make this easy on you by assembling a list on our website of all the relief agencies because so many of our viewers have asked us for help, they would like to help the folks here. and a reminder for some of you, this will be a special hour-long edition of nbc "nightly news." we'll keep going for the next

hour. if your station doesn't stay with us, we'll be streaming our coverage live on that very same website. we're also back on the air, a prime time special at 8:00 p.m., 7:00 central time of what happened here. that's the first half of our coverage tonight. i'm brian williams in moore, oklahoma.

devastation in oklahoma. this is nbc "nightly news" with brian williams reporting tonight from moore, oklahoma. >> and welcome back to those of you following us on our local nbc stations to what is our second half hour, special hour-long coverage tonight from this devastated city of moore, oklahoma, south of oklahoma city where we've had confirmation today these were some of the strongest winds on earth. an ef-5 tornado. that is the strongest possible category. we woke up to some good news. the wildly fluctuating death toll, which stood at 51 when so many americans went to bed last night, rose to 91 overnight in