Posted on 05/05/2007 12:04:35 AM PDT by silentknight
Damage being reported for over 100 miles. Reports of dozens of injuries and missing people. Damage to numerous towns from one large tornado or a series of large tornadoes. Tornado tracked from south of Greensburg, Kansas and is still going as of 2 a.m. this morning near Claffin, Kansas.
Reports of dozens of homes destroyed. Many people still trapped.
Red Cross is opening a number of shelters.
Ambulances being called in from over 100 miles away.
Reports of fatalities.
NWS reports the tornado was over one mile wide. Numerous reports of damage swaths of 1/2 mile to one mile wide.
News Conference on CNN now.
Some are saying it was 1.5 miles mile.
2 other large tornadoes elsewhere.
Here is some aerial footage of the Greensburg damage:
http://www.ksn.com/news/local/7351141.html
These are the type that scare me. The big one had 2 following it at one point.
Probably - the bigger tornadoes (F4, F5) start spawning their own child tornadoes and seem to be a self-sustaining energy proposition. They can literally cruise for houre, destroying everything in their path.
Trivia: The Moore tornado was so far off the “usual” F5 range that there was talk of adding an “F6” range to the scale.
Amazing
Damage from the Moore, Ok F5 in 1999:
This tornadoe displaced heavy brick buildings and stripped large amounts of vegetation, what I can see from videos it has all the damage characteristics of a F4-F5 tornado. Greensburg is a beautiful little town with large magestic houses with brick foundries near the center of town, sad for me to see this.
rw; Greensburg started out in the 1880's with just a few in it's trade area. It is all a matter of will. There will be much help for those who make the desision to stay and rebuild homes and busnesses. No doubt it is a life changing event and a time marker for all involved. And time and life marches on.
Suddenly the winds blew hard and hail broke his windshield. A sign said 1 mile to Greensburg.
He pulled under the convenience store awning for cover, looked over and saw two elderly women huddled in a car. He held his hands up as if to say to them, “What’s going on?”
He hurried into the store, where a clerk told him a storm was headed right at Greensburg.
As he ushered the older women out of their car and into the store he looked for the best shelter.
He found a walk-in cooler and he told himself that would be the most sturdy place. As he and about 10 other people took refuge there, he kept kicking the door open, fearing it would shut, locking them in. Suddenly his ears popped and the door slammed shut.
The wind roared then it got quiet. Then it got the loudest.
“The cooler saved our lives,” Stauner said the next morning when the light revealed that the cooler had all but collapsed.
Drako rode out the storm in the floorboard of the truck.
Thinking about the night before Stauner said, “I’m telling you man, you would not believe it, you would not believe it.”
His camper shell had exploded and some of his belongings apparently blew away. But a prized custom guitar remained in its case, dry, unscathed.
Around 7:30 Saturday morning, about 21 Wichita and Sedgwick County firefighters were waiting by their trucks outside the convenience store — waiting to search house-to-house for bodies or survivors.
At one point, several of them who were gathered around one truck realized that they had been standing in what looked like blood, smeared across the pavement. They carefully stepped around it.
Minutes later they broke into teams and went street-by-street, climbing over debris that bristled with exposed nails.
There were so many house-sized heaps of debris, one firefighter said, “I don’t know where to start.”
http://www.kansas.com/197/story/62572.html
Many people in towns that size can date there family back to its beginning, its hard to give up generational ties to a city when something like this happens. Most will rebuild and return, some will leave to nearby communities or a larger city like Dodge or Pratte.
Did you see the video of those Ok chasers?
They got WAY too close....but great footage.
Its titled “Storm chasers flee tornado, just 50 yards away “
I pray if a twister forms up there today that it stays in a an empty field.
Is that on the net anywhere?
I saw it,gave me the chills.
I am praying.
cnn has extensive coverage and a link to the OK stormchasers.
Also if you go to
http://www.kwch.com/global/story.asp?s=6473329
they are streaming live coverage on the tornado.
I hope this has not been posted already, video from cnn , storm chasers in Oklahoma. Wait through the commercial:
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