>> see you at 6:00. on our broadcast tonight, the desperate search. families looking for their loved ones as the death toll climbs in that catastrophic landslide in washington state. and tonight there are questions about warning signs. demanding answers. after 18 days with no word now, anger boils over in china. tonight, why some experts are warning that the missing airliner may never be found. birth control battle. health care and religion collide at the supreme court, and the outcome will affect millions of american women. and high anxiety after a jaw dropping leap on camera. "nightly news" begins now. good evening. the death toll in washington state has risen, so has the number of names on the list of

those feared missing. a massive hillside rolled down on top of people before they had time to ret. and hopes remain that at least some of them somehow found shelter, somewhere with air where rescuers will find them. on this day, four searchers have arrived with a huge task ahead of them. and now the questions as to whether there were any warning signs before this giant piece of earth gave way. we have it covered tonight from two of the towns affected there, starting with nbc's miguel almaguer. miguel, good evening. >> reporter: brian, good evening. late-breaking news out west tonight. the sheriff's department confirms more bodies have been discovered in the search zone. the official death toll was at 14. that number will rise. some 172 are unaccounted for. late tonight in this wet and dangerous weather, the search upstream does go on. today in what is left of the town of oso, the search

continues after more bodies were discovered and 911 calls reveal terror just after the earth gave way. >> it's like a mudslide. everything's gone. the houses are gone. i got people here screaming for help. >> my neighbor's house and their neighbor's house has been completely taken out. and it's collapsed on several of them and they're trapped. >> reporter: search teams are now trying to pinpoint the missing by tracking their cell phone. in the confusion over who has vanished, a virtual bulletin board posts names, faces and stories. >> i'm not just an emergency management director, i'm a dad, i'm a husband. i want to know what happened. >> reporter: today we learned a small earthquake 12 days ago may have contributed to this slide. it was not the first on this mountain. in 2006 a smaller portion of the same hillside gave way, pouring mud toward the homes below. in 1999, scientist dan miller warned of the potential for a large catastrophic failure here. >> i think the county should have been aware of the risks. there have been numerous studies that have documented it. >> reporter: knowing what you know now, you think the county

did everything they could have to protect its residents? >> we've done everything we could to protect them. we mitigated the landslide from 2006. there's been warnings and advance notifications of the high risk for landslide. >> reporter: everything in its path was just ripped away. this is steelhead drive, where amanda lennick, a young nurse, had just moved into her dream home. saturday morning there were three men working for her. bill welsh, steve neal and steven hadaway. >> i'd like to think he's out there sitting somewhere, stuck in a little puddle, waiting for someone to come save him. and he's going to be so mad that it took so long. >> reporter: john and chris regalbrugge also lived on steelhead drive. she the devoted mother of five. he the high school wrestler and football captain turned navy commander. >> i'm proud. i just pray to god they find them okay. i'm hoping i'll pick up the phone and see them. >> reporter: a community reeling

from loss, facing so much work ahead. miguel almaguer, nbc news, oso, washington. this is joe fryer in darrington, washington, east of the mudslide, where dozens of volunteers showed up at the fire station to help with the search. among them dane bruener whose heartbreaking mission is to find his sister, summer raffo. >> my mom wants to hold her one last time and i'm going to make sure that happens. >> reporter: when the mudslide hit saturday, bruener quickly drove to the scene to search for summer. >> somewhere out there is my sister. >> reporter: despite the danger, he's returned every day since. >> anything and everything that was there is obliterated and gone. >> reporter: any glimmer of hope that she might have survived started to fade when we spoke with dane last night. >> you just move from the rescue stage to the recovery stage, you have to have closure now. it's so bad in there. >> reporter: with frustration growing, many found their own way into the devastation over the past few days, searching for any signs of life.

one group took a picture of this house, buried to the roof in mud. >> there's no words. i don't know how to describe it. it's really horrific. >> reporter: today all paths to the slide zone are blocked. only a small group of volunteers with special skills and equipment can enter. sherry brewer donated an excavating machine to help with the search for summer. at one point searchers thought they had found her car. >> they went in with chainsaws and shovels and dug down. it was a suburban, and it was it rolled up in a ball the size of an atv. >> reporter: despite the magnitude of what they're facing, dane bruener, like the rest of darrington, refuses to stop searching. >> if she's gone, then i want to bring her out. if she's alive, it's all the more there. but one word to sum it up is closure. >> reporter: more than 100 volunteers showed up here at the fire station this morning willing to help with the search. 25 of them including dane were

allowed to go in. but for now police are working to keep all other citizens out of the mudslide zone. brian? >> joe fryer, miguel almaguer before that, starting us off from washington state. gentlemen, thanks. tonight china is demanding access to the raw satellite data that has malaysian authorities convinced flight 370 crashed into the southern indian ocean killing all 239 people on board. most of the passengers were chinese, and many of the families want to know why, with no physical evidence, their loved ones have just been declared dead. nbc's tom costello continues on this story from washington. tom, good evening. >> reporter: hi, brian. the search was suspended today, tuesday, because of bad whether in the region. the search zone is massive. it is about the size, we're told, of alaska. and so far, they haven't found a single piece of debris that they know came from this plane. meanwhile, there's speculation it could take years to find this plane, if it's at the bottom of the ocean.

in beijing this morning, outrage and anguish as hundreds of family members marched on the malaysian embassy demanding answers about flight 370. while a world away, the brother of american passenger philip wood is just trying to cope. >> sometimes i'm angry, sometimes i'm just crying. and sometimes i'm just holding it together. >> reporter: meanwhile, we're learning more about why investigators are focused on the southern indian ocean. engineers at inmarsat examining those faint pings transmitted by flight 370 compared them with data from other 777s flying at the same time. then with some advanced math and assumptions about speed and altitude, they came up with two flight paths into the indian ocean. if the plane had been flying at 460 miles per hour, its path could have ended here. but if the speed was 517 miles per hour, the flight could have ended hundreds of miles away. the plane apparently stopped flying sometime between 8:11 and 9:15 a.m. malaysia time.

>> they're going to have to really have their work cut out to find wreckage. >> reporter: the ocean is constantly churning with towering waves feeding into a fast moving southern current that circles the globe. oceanographers warn there is little time to trace debris back to the crash site. >> within a few more months, some of the debris will be in a different ocean than some of the others. some of it will go into the indian ocean. some of it will go in the pacific ocean and all the way near peru. >> reporter: now a cyclone is hitting and winter is just weeks away. if searchers do find the wreckage, the condition of the wings and fuselage could tell them a lot. anthony brickhouse teaches crash investigations at embery riddle. >> when an aircraft crashes on to the land or the water, it leaves a specific signature, such as an overstress situation where the plane is maneuvered beyond its capability. if there's an explosion on board an aircraft, you're also going to get a specific type of damage. >> reporter: malaysian authorities and the experts we talked to say it's highly

unlikely that anybody survived this crash, and they point out that it is at least a thousand miles from any land. it's also 23,000 feet deep in places. that's going to make it very difficult to find these black boxes. brian? >> tom costello with the very latest of what is known from washington tonight. tom, thanks. the u.s. supreme court took on health care and religion, specifically this. does the obama care health law violate the religious freedom of employers by requiring them to provide insurance for contraceptives? our justice correspondent pete williams with us from the court tonight. pete, good evening. >> reporter: brian, good evening. this legal battle presents the court with a question that's never been asked before. does a business, a for profit corporation, have the right to claim it has religious freedom? outside the court today, strong passions. >> the people united will never be defeated. ♪ >> reporter: among those in the crowd, two women drawn to the legal showdown for opposite reasons.

did you come here specifically because of this case? >> oh, yes. the basic freedoms that america stands for are at stake. religious freedom is the first freedom guaranteed by the constitution. >> what's at stake for me is the right of men and women to plan their own families at the time when they can best afford to have children. >> reporter: two for-profit corporations, conestoga wood of pennsylvania, owned by a mennonite family, and the hobby lobby, a family owned chain of arts and crafts stores say providing insurance coverage for some contraceptions amounts to abortion, violating their religious beliefs. the companies say even though they're for-profit corporations, they can still claim religious freedom. >> just because you're engaged in a business and trying to make some profit, doesn't mean you leave all your religious beliefs at the door. you see this with prominent companies that are closed on sunday. >> reporter: but the obama

administration says freedom of religion is a right of individual, not corporations. and that contraceptives are essential to preventative care. >> this case is basically about whether an employer, because of their own personal views, can pick and choose which laws they want to adhere to and which they don't. >> reporter: the court's three women justices questioned the companies the hardest. sonia sotomayor asked could an employer refuse to provide coverage for blood transfusions or vaccines on religious grounds? elena kagan asked, what about refusing to pay the minimum wage or obey child labor laws. anthony kennedy, the likely deciding vote, seemed conflicted. he asked, do the religious views of the employer trump the right of employees, putting them at a disadvantage? but he also challenged the government, saying under its view of for-profit corporations, could be forced to pay for abortion. the court may end up saying the

closely held family businesses can get exceptions based on religious views. but that would not be the sweeping ruling that opponents of obama care were hoping for. brian? >> pete williams at the court, we'll see you in a couple months. pete, thanks. as we approach the first anniversary of the boston bombing, tonight nbc news has had an early look at the congressional report on the investigation into the marathon bombing expected to be made public this week. nbc news has learned it raises serious questions about how one of the alleged bombers was able to leave the u.s. and re-enter, despite being put on a watch list by the cia after they received warn, from russian intelligence. investigators say the name of the older brother, tamerlan tsarnaev had been misspelled on that watch list, and he was able to travel to the dagestan region in russia, which has been home to terrorist activity. much more of our exclusive reporting tonight on this topic. it's on our website, nbcnews.com. because very little of what a president says in public is unplanned, the words president obama chose today to describe russia are getting a lot of attention tonight. the president, as you may know, is meeting with other leaders at

a nuclear summit overseas. vladimir putin is not there, and today when asked about russia's land grab and the current tensions, the president went the faint praise route. >> america has a whole lot of challenges. russia is a regional power that is threatening some of its immediate neighbors. not out of strength, but out of weakness. >> a regional power. the g8 is already reducing to a g7. russia will not host the next meeting. the president went on to say that russia does not pose the number one security threat to the u.s. these days. speaking with the backdrop of a nuclear conference, the president said he's much more concerned about, for example, a nuclear device going off here in manhattan. look at this shot today of the skyline of houston, texas. a massive fire visible for miles around. on the ground it was a huge

blaze that tore through five stories, 368 apartment units that were under construction. it was fed by high winds that at times prevented the water from reaching flames. it went to five alarms. thankfully all are safe and accounted for. late today in galveston, the coast guard partially reopened the big houston ship channel there. a very busy seaport that was shut down while they scrambled, as they still are, to clean up an oil spill that spread for miles after the collision of a ship and a barge. still ahead for us tonight, a leap from the top captured on camera. but it also shows a major security breach that's raising some major questions. and later, into the wild. an unbelievable rescue mission underway in california.

some will no doubt secretly admire what they did for the courage and skill and the incredible amount of moxie that it took to pull it off. others will quickly remind us it's a crime to scale the tallest building in new york and the most heavily defended. say nothing of jumping off the top with a parachute. that's exactly what happened. it was all captured on video, and it's raising more concerns about security. we get our report on all of it tonight from nbc's stephanie gosk. >> reporter: for these b.a.s.e. jumpers, sneaking to the top of the nation's tallest building and leaping off must have seemed an irresistible challenge. new york prosecutors also say the early morning jump on september 30th broke the law. this youtube video was posted just after the four-person team turned themselves in to police on monday. 32-year-old james brady was a

construction worker at the freedom tower last fall. that's him installing a beam on the 104th floor. he and his crew have pleaded not guilty to multiple charges including felony burglary and reckless endangerment. in a statement, new york police commissioner william bratton says these arrests should send a message to anyone thinking about misusing a landmark this way. one of their lawyers says the felony charge is too severe for the crime. >> the charge that they're facing is something that has up to seven years in jail. that's not something that's appropriate for this circumstance. >> reporter: the b.a.s.e. jumpers say they snuck in through a hole in the fence, the same explanation that a 16-year-old gave for how he snuck up to the top just last week. justin was arrested for trespassing after slipping past guards and riding the elevator all the way to the top. that's two security breaches at the freedom tower construction site in six months, a place where security is supposed to be a priority. joe morris is a former police

chief for the port authority. >> i can guarantee you that people are looking at what happened, what went wrong. >> reporter: and with some concern? >> absolute concern. i can guarantee you people didn't sleep for the next couple days. >> reporter: the parachuters may not be resting easy either. a prison sentence is a high price to pay for bragging rights. stephanigosk, nbc news, new york. and in other tall building news, ford motor company did it as a stunt back in 1965. they put a mustang on the observation deck of the empire state building. today they announced they're doing it again. transported in parts and reassembled, the car will be on display in mid april during the new york auto show. another break, we're back in a moment with one school's decision that has outraged parts of an entire community.

earlier in the broadcast, we mentioned that president obama today called russia a regional power. well, that regional power provided a ride to space for an american astronaut today. steve swanson and two russians

cosmonauts all cozy-like in the soyuz, blasted off to join the current crew on board the international space station. space is one of those areas where the u.s. and russia still cooperate. in fact, it's brought us closer over the years, which is a good thing, when our guys need a ride up and back. it's been spring now for six days, and yet it snowed for much of this day in washington, d.c.. all part of this late season storm that is spooling up over the east coast that will bring parts of new england some real heavy snow and high winds before its all over. a 9-year-old girl who shaved her head in solidarity with a friend undergoing treatment for cancer was suspended from school in grand junction, colorado for violating the dress code. it calls for uniformity and to avoid distraction. as you might imagine, the decision didn't go over very well.

she has been allowed back in school, and the school board meets there tonight to talk about it. a change is coming in the nfl and it has to do with celebrations. no more using the goal post to dunk the football after a touchdown. the league says damage to the goalpost can result. that means a delay of game while they have to be straightened. this was a special day in this building, and tonight we want to congratulate the dean of all the anchors here in new york city. chuck scarborough today celebrates 40 years on the air at wnbc-tv. looking back, chuck appears to have started while still in high school in 1974. the veteran journalist is also an air force veteran, a pilot, author and the recipient of 33 emmy awards. congratulations to our colleague, but most of all our friend chuck, without whom it would not be new york. when we come back, a giant water taxi on the move tonight, 30 million seats are going fast.

\s break/e our final story here tonight is about a rescue mission underway in california, in the midst of the history making drought that has left rivers so low that tens of millions of salmon are having trouble getting to where they need to be this time of year. that's where something called the water taxi comes in. we get the story tonight from nbc's harry smith. >> reporter: in northern california this spring, there's snow in the high country. it's only a quarter of what it ought to be. these seasons of drought have left reservoirs and streams way below normal. where there's not enough water, means trouble, especially if you're a fish. >> fish need water, when there's no water there are severe consequences to our fishery population. >> reporter: early this morning, tanker trucks began filling up at the coleman national fish

hatchery near anderson. filling up with salmon. >> in order to give them a better chance to hit the ocean and survive, we're actually putting them into trucks and driving them about 275 to 300 miles past a lot of the problems that are currently in river. >> reporter: the salmon are about six months old, the result of last year's spawning season. their very survival requires deep enough water to swim to sea. without that this year, u.s. and california fisheries don't want to take the risk. so the chinook salmon won't swim, they'll get a ride to san francisco bay. once here, the fish will acclimate for a while, then be set free. water is one of those things we take for granted. fish do too. giving 30 million salmon a lift is probably the least we could do. harry smith, nbc news, new york. >> that's our broadcast for a tuesday night. thank you for being here with us. i'm brian williams. we, of course, hope to see you right back here tomorrow

evening. good night. we are tracking the rain, the first storm to hit the bay area in several weeks. a live look at the radar. a few bands of rain still active. the rain great for the drought but many people watching the hillsides. good evening and thanks for joining us. i'm raj mathai. >> i'm jessica aguirre. the top story is outside your front door, the rainmaking a return to the bay area. live team coverage for you tonight. chief meteorologist jeff ranieri is tracking the storm but first, to cheryl hurd live in pacifica

and some people are nervous there and for good reason, they have history. >> reporter: yes, it does. i spent many days here in pacificia four years ago and this is why, there were major mudslides but as you can see, engineers have done a lot of work suring up the area. there are some sizable rain in some areas today, which made some people think about mudsl e mudslid mudslides. there was not a lot of rain today, but enough to remind people how some areas are venerable. >> i think people have to be prepared. >> reporter: land sides are a reality for people like lu. she lives on wildcat road, the same street her neighbor's home slid off the foundation in 19 83. >> they take the risk of living in remote places and areas like this, we did the same. we're ready. >> that's a monitoring device to keep track of how much movement