they all made it out okay. >> they say it took three men to hold down that storm shelter door. >> next thing you know -- you see the light's coming undone and we couldn't reach for it and it ripped open the door. it just -- glass and debris started slamming on us and we thought we were dead. >> it is one of the most powerful and deadly tornados in the last 50 years. at least 51 people are dead. many of them schoolchildren. and they continue to scour the area where mazza towers elementary school once stood, holding out some hope of finding that incredible story of survival. the path of destruction goes on for miles and most of moore, oklahoma, lies in ruins yet again. this community dealing with a tragic blow from mother nature. this is a special edition of "way too early." good morning, i'm brian shactman.

tuesday, may 24th. the tornado touching moore, oklahoma, near oklahoma city, a rarity. the combination of power, size, and time on the ground plus the fact that it moved through a populated area. all of those elements led to one of the most deadly storms in the last 50 years. here's a look at newspapers from the area. "tulsa world" says "moore again," referencing the deadly tornado in 1999 in the same place that recorded the strongest winds on record at over 300 miles per hour. same with "the oklahoman" which has "worst than may 3rd," the date of that 1999 storm. the extent of loss of life and damage remains to be determined. here's what we know. the death toll stands at 51. that number is expected to rise significantly. at least 20 of those victims as you saw in that open are children. more than 145 others are hurt. 70 of those are children. the tornado was on the ground for 40 minutes and traveled about 10 miles in a populated

area. it is right now being classified as an ef-4 tornado. that's the second most powerful classification with wind speeds from 166 to 200 miles per hour. but that could get upgraded once they get more analysis. we want to go to the scene where chris jansing is standing by live in moore, oklahoma. chris, we have a time issue here. more weather coming in and the recovery effort has to get a lot done before that happens, right? >> reporter: brian, literally seconds ago i got an update on the forecast. we're expecting rain in an hour. lightning storms in half an hour. you can imagine how that complicates the efforts that have been going on through the night. a dramatic and frantic race against time. particularly at that elementary school where they are still hoping to find survivors. let me set the scene where i am because there's also been activity around here. i think you can see the collapsed houses behind me. now, they have already searched these houses but just across the street is a medical center.

they're concerned about who might be in this. they expect that when dawn breaks they're going to go in there. but they have already gone into a nursery school, a day care center that was attached to it. and wind the last hour or so, they did find survivors in there. so you mentioned that miraculous survivor story, that's what they're hoping for as these trained searchers and rescuers have been working through the night. of course, it has been high drama here. and you cannot help but think back to newtown when we heard about the scene outside the elementary school with a man and a megaphone standing and reading the names of children who had survived. and of course, the heartbreak of parents who are still waiting to hear what happened to their children. so obviously a race against time because the people who may be trapped and this threatening weather that is coming in very soon. >> you talk about threatening weather, not to spook you, we want you to be safe, we see flashes of lightning behind you. i do want to ask you, since

you've been such a veteran of the news business, in terms of coordinating something like -- everyone wants to help. it's frantic. it's ten highs. how do they go about organizing such a search and recovery? >> reporter: the logistics boggle the mind, but obviously the number one priority, and it's very clear, is to find the people who may still be alive, number one. but you have so many thousands of people who are displaced. the red cross has been setting up centers. and then there has been communication problems. driving in just this morning, we were getting cell service in and out and there have been tremendous numbers of stories of people trying to reach loved ones and can't get through or get a partial text message. and so the first thing is to figure out how many truly are missing, to rescue those who may still be trapped. but then beyond that, take care of those who are here. sadly, this is an area that's very experienced. the mayor who was mayor in 1999 when another big tornado came

through said they're already printing up street signs that have come down. obviously a sign of them wanting to get back to normal. but also serves a very real purpose as people are trying to get back into neighborhoods, whether it's rescuers or insurance people who want to help the people who are looking already to see what's left of where they lived and to try to think about rebuilding. >> and of course there's no power there. they have gas lines, they don't have them all located. >> reporter: gas lines, power lines presenting a real danger, without a doubt. >> chris jansing of jansing and company, appreciate you being there for us and getting the information. bill karins, nbc's meteorologist, talk more about what chris touched on. we literally saw the flashes of light behind her. what can we expect there? >> ever since the tornado hit, the weather's been tranquil there. no problems whatsoever. just in the last hour, we've seen numerous showers and thunderstorms popping up just to the south side of moore, oklahoma. it looks like some of these are

going to try to sneak up to the north here shortly. as far as the worst of it right now, about i'd say 20 miles or so just south of moore. it's going to be probably about a half hour or so before some of this gets there. there is numerous lightning strikes with this too. if there's enough lightning i'm sure the workers would go through rain. if there's lightning for their safety they may have to go into their trucks, and every half hour counts. the severe weather threat ended pretty much overnight. we still have storms near central oklahoma, of course. but everyone else, severe weather is done. unfortunately, we're not done. today is day five of severe weather outbreaks. five days in a row after a tranquil spring. we've already had about 65 tornados in the last four days. we're probably going to add another dozen or so later on today. areas of yellow, possibility of severe weather. but the best chance of tornados is this area of red. it includes the dallas-ft. worth area, tyler, shreveport,

texarkana, little rock. this area of moderate risk, possibilities of tornados today, affects 9.5 million people are at risk of seeing dangerous weather today. >> yesterday, in 1999, it was a series of tornados. this was one huge tornado. >> yeah, the one that went through moore in '99 was a single tornado. this one was very similar to that but a little wider. that's why it actually affected so much larger of an'. the outbreak in the southeast in 2011 that killed over 300 people, that was like dozens and dozens of twisters. >> bill, thank you very much. you've been up all night doing weather reports for us. there's iconic images of these trains and i want to show you what seems to be one of them. both of the new york tabloid newspapers have this image and that is near what was plaza towers elementary school. it's one of the sites of the worst damage of the storm. at least seven children reportedly killed there. by some estimates that number

could climb a whole loot higher. crews search for missing children throughout the spire night. as we talked about with chris jansing, no power, they're barely able to see a thing. now it's gone unfortunately from a hopeful mission to one of recovery although we are always hopeful of that story of amazing survival. as the storm approached, rather than sending kids home, the school had them shelter in place. according to nbc affiliate kfor, some of the kids were in a hallway when the tornado struck. others in bathrooms. many were plucked almost miraculously alive from the rubble. >> we had to walk over piles of like -- >> rubble. >> and i was pretty scared. everybody was rushing everybody. and then i came out and i saw the cars and i saw the houses and i just started crying so hard. >> you are never, ever going to go through this again. >> we had to sit like this.

and the tornado had started knocking on the ceilings, go up and down. and a light went down and hit me in the head. and then all the other girls were screaming and they were crying. >> i had to hold on to the wall to keep myself safe because i didn't want to fly away in the tornado. >> it was coming, it was hitting. and everybody said, put your head down, put your head down. but some people got hurt but we made it alive. >> i look at these stories so differently now that i'm a parent. these kids are just amazing, the recall and their bravery, to be honest with you. briarwood elementary school, another school, suffered heavy damage as well with cars literally thrown into the building. so far, we don't have any reports of fatalities from that school. governor mary phelan visited the towers to see the damage firsthand, she'll join us later. hospitals flooded with patients.

some of the 145 reported injured, family members there anxious for details about their loved ones. one of the worst areas of destruction actually is a hospital. cars just stacked up against moore medical center. amazingly, all the staff members and the 30 patients inside reportedly survived. >> that right there's the main entrance into the hospital. all those cars are wedged. it looks like a flood, like floodwater picked all that up, shoved it right there, and again, that's the main entrance right there. you're looking kind of towards the northwest. so that's pretty much the track of the storm. >> those are images that look like the tsunami. just incredible, the damage that mother nature did. we're going to have a whole lot more on this story. still ahead on "way too early," a live report from mike bettes of the weather channel. he'll help explain how we can tell how powerful the storm actually was besides just looking at the damage and the images and all that analysis after the fact. right now we're looking at some

more. this is a time lapse video of the actual storm. that's not realtime, that's sped up. amazing. you can almost feel the force of it. you see the flashes of light as it takes out power lines and other almosts of the infrastructure of moore, oklahoma. if you want to help, all you have to do is text redcross, all one word, to 90999. to give $10. or go online at redcross.org. i believe you can earmark that money directly for this particular tornado. you can also visit americares.org.

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funnels out. it's got a pretty big lowering. then we can almost make out a "v" shape in the bottom of it where that tornado is on the ground destroying power lines and everything in its way. you can see, big power flashes there. it's continuing to track east. and this is fixing to get in a bad area because we're coming right back into housing additions and more of the residential part of town here. >> i'd encourage people to go to msnbc.com to look at the full-time lapse, to see it from beginning to end is truly amazing. they basically make 40 minutes into a minute and a half. welcome back to "way too early" and special coverage from moore, oklahoma, where at least 51 people are dead and that number expected to rise significantly. the weather channel's mike bettes is in moore right now. mike, you're actually in plaza towers elementary, i'm told. can you give me a sense of what you're seeing around you? we don't have mike? we'll have to get back to him when we get a shot.

right now bill karins, if we have him. you and i talked about it a little bit in our last block, about the history. i got my tornados wrong, you corrected me. give us a sense of how this storm compares to the other big tornados. we think of joplin, we think of what happened in 1999. >> in our lifetimes this is right up this. i mean, right up there with joplin which i thought we wouldn't top for a long time. we didn't top -- it was 1947, the tri-state tornados, until joplin. that's how long we went until we had one that was considerably big like that. joplin goes down as the most expensive tornado ever too, $2.8 billion was the insurance estimates on that one. and that's top worldwide all-time. the moore tornado in 1999 is also in the top six. we've only had six billion-dollar tornados in the world history. this one's going to be a billion dollars, imagine that. we've only had seven, two of them went through moore, oklahoma. that's how random this is. like winning the power ball

twice in a row. the odds of moore, oklahoma, being hit by two tornados this strong is so off the charts ridiculous. this picture behind me tells the tale. almost reminds me, if you remember when hurricane andrew went through south florida, housing that was similar to this that was gone and devastated from 200-mile-per-hour winds, that's exactly what this looks like through moore. you can't make out what the building was in the bottom of the screen. just north of there, house after house gone. here's what you need to know this morning waking up. the tornado watch was issued for moore, oklahoma, about 2:10 before the storm hit saying, tornado are possible. the tornado warning telling people in moore the tornado is heading that way was 25 to 40 minutes in advance. the national average is 12 minutes so they had plenty of lead time. we had a helicopter pilot up there showing you the storm before the tornado even formed, showed it forming, going to the ground, and it happened at 3:00

in the afternoon. i mean, there's not much else you could do. i know in these situations, especially with kids and the injuries and fatalities at the school, you just want to assign blame somehow. but i think everything was done properly. >> you know, so people evacuate order did they go to their base snmt we saw streets and streets destroyed and not everyone who lived in these homes perished. >> a lot of places in this area don't have basements. a lot of places in the east have basements but they don't. either a storm shelter or go to a friend's storm shelter. that's what they were dealing with. you know, usually you tell people to stay in place. but at one point, once we knew how bad this was, all the helicopter pilots and the chief meteorologist at the nbc station were telling people, if you can't get underground, run, get on a bike, get in a car, go. usually we don't tell people to do that because we don't want the roads congested. but that's what we were dealing with out there.

plaza towers elementary school before, and then the path of the storm, i highlighted it where the plaza tower elementary school was. looks like it went directly over the top. at its peak intensity right over the plaza tower elementary school. also the moore medical center which they're saying doesn't exist anymore either. >> thank you, bill, we appreciate it. you've been up basically overnight. let's take a look, i believe we have an image of where mike bettes was. they're moving the trucks because they still are considering it an active scene in terms of recovery. so it's a very fluid situation, guys. i mean, a lot of it might look like a movie set at home. this is a real situation where we don't want to be in the way of authorities while they try to do their jobs. we want to bring you as close to the story as possible so there's always negotiation there. mike bettes is being moved. this could happen several times throughout the morning. he was right there at plaza towers elementary school, and of course, if we can get him on during this show or "morning

joe," we'll do that. coming up at the top of the hour on "morning joe," they're in moore, oklahoma, right now getting ready to give us all the information that you need as this story continues to develop. we come back here, we'll talk about social media and the role in the coverage of this tornado. we've seen how twitter works. now vine, the video service in twitter, they're changing the way that we as people, not just journalists, report on natural disasters. >> what i recall is we picked up this storm and mike kept saying, it's on the ground, it's on the ground. we couldn't really depict it. and then out of nowhere, the rain just let up enough that you could actually see the funnel. and then as soon as we saw the funnel, you know, that was on the west side, the west side of i-44 tracking towards moore. you know, it just kept getting bigger and bigger and about the river you could see it was probably a quarter mile wide. and just after that, it seemed like it got, you know, instantly a half mile wide.

then as soon as it comes up to like may, i remember mike said, hey, it's crossing may at 149th, or 134th. and anyway, the screen just got completely white. it looked like the wall cloud was just going completely to the ground. that was all the debris that was obscuring the structure of the tornado. it was rotating in it. it's coming through moore, it's barreling down. i live just on the east side of i-35, an eighth of a mile. my neighbors to the -- the neighborhood south of me, their houses are gone. so the only thing i could think of from my perspective, man, i hope my family is in their shelter where they're supposed to be. luckily they were. i had a bit of mixed emotions because i'm trying to provide a service to the public here, tell everybody where it's at. in the back of my mind i still have the safety of your own family. mommy's having a french fry. yes she is, yes she is. [ bop ] [ male announcer ] could've had a v8. 100% vegetable juice,

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they have just put some yellow tape around the school as they try to get back a lot of the folks who have been joining in search efforts, because quite frankly, it is noisy and if there are children who are trying to scream for help, they can't get to them. they're trying to get some hysterical parents back. every possible emergency person is doing their best to pull the victims out alive. dy speak to a teacher, her name was rhonda, sixth grade teacher here, she is nothing short of a hero. she had six kids with her in the

bathroom, she laid on top of them as the storm passed through, they're all alive, all accounted for. >> weather stories like that told all over social media too. a number of people using vine which is the twitter video service. people went to nearby neighborhoods to show the damage. these images are all from a man by the name of david massey. the volume of debris is just unbelievable. those are real pictures of places that were homes, schools, and entire neighborhoods. a lot of people tweeting photos of the damage as well. governor mary phelan tweeted, visited tonight with search crews at plaza towers elementary school in moore, appreciate their hard work and tireless dedication. she will ob "morning joe." one of the most famous residents of moore, oklahoma, country music star toby keith tweeted out a statement saying, the storm has devastated the community that i grew up in, i rode my bike through those neighborhoods, i have family and friends in moore, my heart and prayers go to those that have lost so much but moore is strong and we will persevere, god be

with all of you. a fascinating part of the story is that we see the destruction on the ground. but the swirling thing here throws stuff everywhere. >> there's already been reports debris was found in tulsa, oklahoma. i heard one report unconfirmed that as far away as missouri, brans branson, missouri, someone has found debris that they know is from this tornado. i mean, if it's a light enough object, there's cars that were tossed. if it's a light enough object, it could be tossed thousands of feet in the sky and slowly make its way down. it's not unheard of. there's a facebook page that's already been set up. if you find items, post them there, so hopefully people can find photos or something else, a memory from their lives. >> again, the tornado in moore, oklahoma, at least 51 people confirmed dead. 20 of them children. we do expect that number to go up. we will stay on this story. we have joe and mika on the ground. bill karins, thank you for your

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we had to walk over piles of like -- >> rubble. >> and everything. and it was pretty scary. everybody was rushing everybody. and then i came out and i saw the cars and i saw the houses a started crying so hard. >> you are never ever going to go through this again. >> we had to sit like this. and the tornado started knocking all the ceiling going up and down and a light went down and hit me in the head. and all the other girls were screaming and they were crying. >> i had to hold on to the wall to keep myself safe because i didn't want to fly away in the tornado. >> it was coming and it was hitting and everybody said put your head down, put your head down, but some people got hurt, but we made it alive. >> we had to pull a car out of the front hallway off a teacher and she -- i don't know at