it's wednesday, may 22nd. the scene here in moore, oklahoma is unlike anything i've ever seen before. and what's become cliche is really true. whether people talk about it as looking like a movie set or being surreal. if you want to pan off over here and you really get an insight. you almost feel like you're violating people's private lives by walki ining down the street. you have teddy bears, things part of people's homes and it's difficult to even consider what that might mean if you were in the same kind of situation. and nobody walks down the street even if they've been here for two days now has a different reaction. it's just something you have to see for yourself. the images we try to bring them to you as best we can but it really does not do justice if you have ever had a home, what it means to see it completely destroyed. we're not talking about being blown over. the best way it was put to me was you put the home into a blender of humanity and put it

on the frap setting. that's what it looks like. i want to get to some of the details to get people up to speed. while the devastation surrounds me is overwhelming we do foe know that the death toll is not as high as had been previously reported from officials here in moore, oklahoma. authorities now say 24 people died in the tornado. the initial estimates were 51. of course, less than half the number they announced when it initially touched down. they double counted in the chaos of the initial reporting. 9 of those 24 were children. some people will point to this type of information as good news. we're going to talk to chris jansing in a little bit and we'll talk all day. people are going to be buried this week and people died. and so even though it's less than expected, it is still an extreme tragedy. we do expect that death toll could rise. there are now 237 reported injuries. we also know the identities of two of those. and slowly the information will

tricket out. je'nae hornsby. officials in moore also identified a 65-year-old tornado victim who was separated from his wife when the tornado hit. she survived. as for the tornado itself, the national weather service said at least one area had ef-5 damage. that means winds that surpassed 200 miles per hour. it traveled on a 17-mile path of destruction. we know on monday afternoon. i want to bring in chris jansing who, i don't know how you do it, not only with the news but also with the amount of work you've been doing. you've been here since monday night. now we have a situation where it's, what do we do now? so when we look at this, what do we do now? >> there's always the question after a disaster like this. do i rebuild or not? in cases like this, this is not a question of, can these properties be fixed. you look miles and miles and see they were decimated.

some of them literally have nothing left. so the question for the residents becomes, do i want to rebuild here? and, obviously, you start with insurance. you start with federal aid. already we have seen emergency response teams that came in even on monday from some insurance companies. and fema got here very quickly as well. you'll remember after katrina, how much criticism there was. well, now they're going around with ipads and they are actually doing house by house assessments. letting people get the process started for federal aid. so that's what's going on here. now i will tell you, walking these neighborhoods, i haven't found a person yet who hasn't said, i plan to rebuild here, which is really the key decision that people are making on a case-by-case basis. >> i wanted to say, what do you do? does every house have to hire their own demolition crew to get stuff out in when are they allowed to come in and safely look through their things. since you brought that up. it begs the question, whether the federal government or state or municipalities will require these safe rooms and subsidize

it because we know this is not necessarily just a working class neighborhood but it costs money to do that especially in this area. so what do you think will be changed in terms of giving these people the ability to be safe in their homes if this ever happens again? >> talking to local authorities they told me yesterday that many newer houses do have them. this entire neighborhood was built in the '70s. so it just happened that there were some safe houses. having said that, it's $8,000 to $10,000 per home. last year there's a lottery to get federal help to get these safe houses in. i think 16,000 people applied. 500 actual got the funding. >> 500 out of 16,000. >> in 1999 when we saw another tornado that came practically through this same path, a lot of people did build safe rooms or in the ground at that point. so we're going to see what happens this time around. >> chris jansing, thank you. chris will be back with us during "morning joe." immediately after reports of the tornado, we heard, of course, plaza towers elementary was in

absolute ruins with dozens of students and teachers inside. many of the injuries and some of the fatalities did come at the school but so did some of the most heroic moments. here's nbc news' kate snow. >> inside the walls of the plaza towers elementary school, 500 students were counting down the days in their final week of class. just in minutes their campus went from looking like this to this. classrooms completely obliterated and 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. >> 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 students with an end of school game when the principal came over the speaker and told them to go to the hallway. damien klein is a fourth grader. >> she told us to get a math book or bag. i already had my bag and then we went in the hall. >> why did she tell you to get a math book or bag? >> we could put it over our head. >> a teacher saw the funnel cloud approaching and ordered them to get into the hallway or closets. >> you've got to get them in there. i'm like, okay. you are getting in there, too. >> 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. i am like, we're not dying. 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. >> the ceiling crashed down on them but the walls still stood. when it was quetta, gain, she sent a small boy to climb up the glath room wall and climb out. >> he looked down at me and he said there's nothing left. >> damien was in the same bathroom crouched under a sink. >> how loud was it? >> it was pretty loud. >> were you scared? >> uh-huh. there was a bunch of people screaming. we could hear them from the girl's rest room. >> 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. >> i definitely think every school in oklahoma should have an underground shelter. so 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. >> that was nbc's kate snow reporting. fema says it costs about $1.4

million to equip a school with adequate safe rooms or shelters to protect the children. and they do have them installed in many parts of the state. just so happens they do not have them at the tower plaza school or briarwood at this point either. we told you that the tornado was now considered an ef-5. it made us think about how does the national weather service make that determination, especially after the tornado has already come through? i want to bring in the weather channel's mike seidel for insight on this. it's fascinating. a lot of people assumed it yesterday and they finally made it official. how do they make it official? >> well, they go out and do these damage assessments. and they were still doing them late yesterday, brian. we first had the fujita scale from 1971 on and then back in 2006, we revamped it over about a four-year period and introduced that in '06. the national weather service storm prediction center. now it's the enhanced fujita.

we have a lot of damage indicators. we have a 28 damage indicators. we look at hotels, motels if they are damaged. multistory complexes. even gas station canopies. and as far as a home goes, a single or multifamily home, 1,000 to 5,000 square feet is on the chart and they look at various degrees of damage. if that home is completely gone, a total loss, it's gone down to the slab, the winds generally about 170 miles an hour. if houses were blown off their slabs, immediately that's ef-4 damage. to get to an ef-5 you have to have significant steel or concrete damage. and that's what they found initially yesterday around that briarwood elementary school and that's what gave them cause to raise it from an ef-4 with estimated peak winds of 190 up to an ef-5 with winds as high as 210 miles an hour. so 28 damage indicators. they look at all kinds of different structures, trees to see if they've been debarked. that's more than likely at least

ef-3 damage. i don't know if that sorts it out for you, brian. and through this neighborhood where we are, this is easily ef-4, maybe some ef-5. the bottom line if the home is gone, a well-constructed brick home, you just have the slab, that is right there, that's ef-4 damage. this is the first ef-5 in oklahoma in two years. and, in fact, the last one in the lower 48 was two years ago on may 24th. today is the two-year anniversary of that ef-5 in joplin, missouri. brian, back to you. >> all right, mike seidel, thanks. it's the cars that amaze me. piled on top of each other. must have been thrown around like a whiffle ball in the vortex of wind. we want to give you a better idea of what the tornado did to this community visually. first let's take a look at moore medical center which is just a few yards from where i'm standing. before the tornado touched down on monday. now here's what it looks like

after the tornado. how about a satellite picture of plaza towers elementary before the twister. take a look at that. and now what it looks like today. finally we want to take a look at the moore community as a whole. and the after picture of that. just complete and utter devastation. it's almost like it was absolutely steam rolled. on capitol hill, it didn't take long for politics to play a part in the effort to recover here. early in the day, president obama pledged federal aid for the victims during a statement at the white house promising, quote, everything the state needs right away. but already some budget hawks, including senator colburn from oklahoma hinted that any spending on disaster relief should be offset by spending cuts elsewhere in the federal government. and we asked senator colburn about his position. >> look, we have $11.8 billion in fema.

it's not even a legitimate question. i was asked that question yesterday before we knew how many people died. so it's inappropriate. the fact is, we've got a lot of waste in the federal government and rather than borrow money against the very people we're going to try to help, we ought to eliminate some of the waste. it's not going to be a problem. we'll not have to do an emergency bill for this. we have plenty of money already set aside to take care of this. >> may end up being a moot point. the federal government already has $11.6 billion stashed away just for disaster relief. so we'll see how that political battle and i'm sure we will talk about that on "morning joe" quite a bit. in meanwhile, still ahead on "way too early," we'll catch you up on some of the other news of the day. quite a bit to talk, about including the senator who is applauding apple and its ceo for avoiding paying taxes. and a big announcement from disgraced former congressman anthony weiner. how he plans to make his return to politics. that story and a check on weather when "way too early" comes right back.

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welcome back to "way too early" here live in moore, oklahoma. we have a lot of other news across the country and the world to get to. i want to start with apple's ceo tim cook facing lawmakers on capitol hill yesterday over the company's tax strategy which saved the company billions of dollars. senator john mccain called apple the nation's biggest tax avoider while senator carl levin said they sought the holy grail of tax shortcuts. however, senator rand paul had a different opinion on apple's tax

practices. >> frankly, i am offended by the tone and tenor of this hearing. i am offended by a $4 trillion government bullying, beraiding and badgering one of america's greatest success stories. if anyone should be on trial here, it should be congress. i frankly think the committee should apologize to apple. >> i think they basically payed $15 million to $17 million in taxes in the u.s. a day anyway. and for more on that hearing and the rest of the business headlines, let's go to jeff cutmore live for us in london with the word on the street. hi, jeff. >> hey, brian. good morning to you. we know what this story is about, don't we? it's about money is tight. and it's definitely tight at federal government level. that's put the focus back on the tax story here. apple has about $145 billion of cash but $102 billion of that sat offshore according to the senators. tim cook at apple said, you know

what? we paid all we owed. so we'll see where the story goes next. let's move you along. ford says it's adding industrial capacity for another 240,000 cars this year. a lot of that extra capacity goes into the north american market. that is a good news story for the economy. ultimately, it means they will also only idle their factories in the u.s. for one week, rather than two during the summer. so extra growth at ford on the auto side. let's talk about the xbox one. this is going to have tv, internet, gaming. it's going to measure your pulse. it also has voice recognition. microsoft think it's the all-singing, all-dancing hottest product on the gaming line. the question is, are customers going to be prepared to pay hundreds of dollars for this device when for 99 cents you can download your old edition of donkey kong or tet russ or whatever your gaming fantasy is,

brian. >> dongey kong. you are dating yourself. i find it ironic people criticize microsoft for going into the hardware business and now it's their business. what is s.a.p. doing with our information? >> well, this is fascinating. in the jargon they call this ancillary revenue. see if you can find another revenue stream out of your core operations. we know what s.a.p. does. it's business software. but they think that they can also data mine their customers to find out what mobile sites they are going to, what apps they are using. they'll give you that realtime information and they can turn that around and give it to the marketers who may want to pitch product at many s.a.p. customers. s.a.p. say it will be anonymous. you will have integrity and privacy on the data but it's just another way s.a.p. thinks it can turn a buck from what the folks out there running companies are doing day-to-day,

brian. >> way to squeeze revenue. jeff cutmore live from london. thanks. i want to go to washington with hearings already under way related to the irs scandal. lois lerner, the irs official at the center of the scandal has invoked her fifth amendment right to avoid answering lawmakers questions, which will probably be unpopular. former irs commissioner shulman did testify refusing to apologize for the agency's actions during an exchange yesterday on capitol hill. >> i am -- i am deeply, deeply saddened by this whole set of events. i read the ig's report and am very much regret that it happened and happened on my watch. >> is that an apology? >> i don't know the details of your constituents. i don't know what happened to them. >> so it's not your responsibility? >> i -- >> the buck doesn't stop with you? >> i certainly am not personally

responsible for creating a list that had inappropriate criteria on it. >> nearly two years after posting inappropriate pictures of himself on the internet, disgraced former congressman anthony weiner officially looking to make a political comeback. late last night a two-minute campaign ad appeared on his website reintroducing the democrat to new york city voters as he declared his candidacy for mayor. >> i made some big mistakes and i know i let a lot of people down. but i've also learned some tough lessons. i'm rung for mayor because i've been running for the middle class and those struggling for my entire life. i hope i get a second chance to work for you. new york city should be the middle class capital of the world. i have ideas on how to do it. 64 of them right on my website. take a look. tell me what you think. >> we love this city and no one will work harder to make it

better than anthony. >> i will fight for you every single day. thank you for watching. >> see what happens with that one. coming up at the top of the hour on "morning joe," our coverage of the tornado here in oklahoma will continue. joe and mika will talk to the head of fema. and we'll have more "way too early" when we come right back. ♪ [ agent smith ] i've found software that intrigues me. it appears it's an agent of good. ♪ [ agent smith ] ge software connects patients to nurses to the right machines while dramatically reducing waiting time. [ telephone ringing ] now a waiting room is just a room. [ static warbles ] [ telephone ringing ] and i've been around theing room toughest guys in football.room. and now i'm training guys who leak a little to guard their manhood. with man style protection...

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welcome back to "way too

early" here in moore, oklahoma. actually want to send it back to new york for a check on your weather from bill karins. >> thanks, brian. where you are standing right now, all of the national weather service surveyors go out there and tell us how bad the damage was in each area. they do a lot of documentation. they also find out where all the people were found. the fatalities and what situation they were in when they died so we can learn from that. and we do safer precautions in the future. now as far as the tornado and of course the devastation and destruction, we thought it would probably go up to an ef-5. it has. it started at 2:45. lifted at 3:35. all the damage was done in literally 50 minutes. and most of it went it went through moore was done in ten minutes. all that destruction. the path length was 17 miles. and at the most at the width it was 1.3 miles wide. for the most part tended to be more or less about a half a mile wide as it went through the city of moore itself.

we did have severe weather but goose egg, zero tornadoes, for the first time in about five days. no one was complaining about that, although there's still a lot of cleanup down here in louisiana and texas. those storms are still going this morning. a pretty good thunderstorm complex to the northeast side of i-10. definitely going to deal with some nasty weather out of baton rouge and lake charles. upstate new york, a lot of hail reports from buffalo to rochester and in minnesota. as far as this afternoon, a few tornadoes possible in ohio. cleveland, columbus, all the way through toledo, cincinnati and even in portions of northern kentucky, a chance of getting strong storms with maybe an isolated tornado. the rest of this will be large hail and damaging winds. where you are located there, brian, today will be a great day. it will be low humidity and sunny and dry. and they need that after yesterday with all the rain and thunderstorms they had when they

were trying to clean up. >> yeah, it is pretty muddy out here. it's a little chilly now. i hope it warms up once that sun comes up. we all know the news cycle is going to move on. here in moore, oklahoma, they're going to be struggling with this for a long, long time. we want to pass along important information in how you can contribute. americares.org and the american red cross. you have to give now because this story will move on but they need the money now. make sure if you want to text red cross to 90999 or go online to redcross.org. we'll talk with americares.org later on. more on this on "morning joe" with mika and joe live in washington, d.c., when we come right back. [ kitchen counselor ] introducing cascade platinum.

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