Rescuers search Oklahoma town ruins after tornado
Many people survived thanks to shelters
Rescue workers with sniffer dogs picked through the ruins of an Oklahoma town yesterday to ensure no survivors remained buried after a deadly tornado left thousands homeless and trying to salvage what was left of their belongings.
“Yesterday I was numb. Today I cried a lot. Now I’m on the victory side of it,” said Beth Vrooman, who hid in a shelter in her garage during Monday’s storm in Moore, Oklahoma. When the winds died down, she realised a car was blocking her exit.
“It took some muscle, but I got out,” Vrooman said, as she sifted through piles of clothing, broken knickknacks and nail-studded boards that had once been her home.
The tornado on Monday afternoon flattened entire blocks of the town, including schools, a hospital and other buildings. At least 24 people were killed and 240 others injured, but authorities were increasingly confident that everyone caught in the disaster had been accounted for, despite initial fears that the twister had claimed the lives of more than 90 people.
Jerry Lojka, spokesman for Oklahoma Emergency Management, said search-and-rescue dog teams would search for anybody trapped under the rubble, but that attention would also be focused on a huge clean up job.
“They will continue the searches of areas to be sure nothing is overlooked,” he said. “There’s going to be more of a transition to recovery.”
More than 1,000 people had already registered for assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or Fema, which sent hundreds of workers to Oklahoma to help with the recovery.
After a long day of searching through shattered homes that was slowed by rainy weather on Tuesday, Oklahoma County Commissioner Brian Maughan said it seemed no one was missing.
The state medical examiner yesterday released details on the people who died in the storm, and reported 10 children, including a four-month-old baby, were among the victims, more than the nine previously reported.
The other children ranged from four years to nine years old. Most of the victims died of blunt force injuries that were probably caused by flying debris and five of the children died from suffocation.