of destruction for miles, and at least 250 people were killed in that state, alone. >> dave: rick reichmuthoined by tuscaloosa mayor maddox and has updates on all of those missing in alabama, good morning. >> rick: if i could count how many times i have written the words, total destruction over the last couple of days it is innumerable. the mayor of the city everybody describes as total destruction. how have things changed from yesterday when we talked to you, to today, we're in a different stage of this. >> we're in search and recovery and have a large number of those in accounted for and our primary focus today is trying to determine where they are so everyone we know of can be accounted for before we get into the full recovery phase. >> rick: you said search and recovery. do you mean search and recovery or rescue. >> we hope rescue but we are 96 hours into the event and we'll have hospitals doing imaging and, hopefully we'll pick up body heat to assist us and i'm scared the loss of life will be more than any of us can bear. >> rick: the numbers vary wildly, 8 in the state and you say 434

rick reichmuth is watching all of this. what's the latest? >> reporter: back in '93 there were the floods that broke the records along the mississippi river. and it's right in that town and flows down to new madrid. a lot of sunshine for people ing sandbag or evacuating for the area. but this is why we are dealing with this. when you take a look at the areas of white and purple that's anywhere from 15-20 inches of rain and it's across all of the streams that lead into the bigger rivers. then all the water has to glow down towards the south. as it does you will see river gauges where you see the purple. that's major flooding. anywhere to the south of where those two rivers merge, that will be record flooding. that will break records from back in 1937. in some cases higher than that from 2-3 feet. they don't know what will happen across those levees because they have never been tested. over the next four days this is a look at the precipitation, not that bad, everything stays to the north so there won't be another inundays of a lot of rain that

chief meteorologist rick reichmuth with the very latest from the weather center. >> reporter: we are breaking these records by a big margin. sometimes you don't want to see the records broken at all but we are breaking them by two to three to four feet in some cases. no rain today, that is good news. nothing that is going to make conditions worse as people are doing their evacuations they don't have to deal with the rain. anywhere where you see the dark green across the ohio river and the mississippi river where they meet and go down that's where we've got the significant flooding, especially around the boot hill of missouri. this is the radar precipitation over the last 30 days. where you see the spots with white that's 20-plus inches of rain. anywhere where you see pinks and reds that's ten to 15. all these areas where the rivers are and all the tributaries into them getting all this rain and the moisture has to move down to the south. tip tonville, that is the mississippi that that will be cresting on sunday. 2 feet above the prior record. this is to the north o