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"I Can't Even Believe I'm Alive"; Tornado's Top Winds Were 190MPH; Moore Endures Disaster, Again; Survivor Finds Dog In Rubble
Aired May 21, 2013 - 14:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back. I'm Anderson Cooper live in Moore, Oklahoma. This is a town that just cannot catch a break today. In addition to the destruction you see all around me now, there is thunder and lightning and a driving rain that is making it miserable for those search and rescuers who are combing through the wreckage all around this area.
There is so much debris to go through. They have had multiple searches in some cases of some areas, a preliminary search and then a more in depth search. We have seen dogs out, folks out with search and rescue teams with listening devices, trying to go through debris like this behind me, which is a former bowling alley just to see if there could be anybody still left alive inside or even if there are other fatalities.
The death toll now stands at 24 confirmed. It had been higher last night. State medical authorities when I was on the air last night had said the death toll was higher than that. They have actually downgraded that as they have themselves have gotten organized and sort of tried to locate people and figure out where people are.
The people of Moore are going forward with an astonishing sense of resilience. You hear that all over the place and the people you've talked to. CNN's John King is out among a lot of people who've lost nearly everything still they are finding a reason to hope. John, what are you hearing from people?
JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That is so remarkable, Anderson, especially on such a miserable day when people are coming back to these homes for the first time. This family is trying to find something. They are trying to find something, some keepsake, some piece of memorabilia, and some family photo.
You find on the ground things like this. This is literally a key, the ticket for the senior high school, the junior-senior prom, May 21st, 1988. This is somebody 48, 49, 50 years old. Maybe this was sitting outside their home. And you've mentioned, people now speak of this like this, May 3rd, that was 1999.
May 20th that was 24 hours ago, just yesterday the storm hit a little under 24 hours. When you meet these families, we met these remarkable people who were in their house back in 1999. They lost everything so they built a small basement when they rebuilt.
They survived with eight members of the family including a 2- year-old grandchild in there yesterday. Many people would think not again, but listen here. They say they will rebuild and stay right here.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KING: What happens now?
PAUL PHILLIPS, TORNADO SURVIVOR: Well, we are just going to get with the insurance one step at a time.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We like our neighborhood. We want to stay.
PHILLIPS: We love the Moore area, as crazy as it may sound, I have been to Boston and Connecticut and I didn't have tornadoes in Quincy but --
KING: I grew up in Dorchester. I know Quincy well.
PHILLIPS: But just love this area.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Born and raised here.
PHILLIPS: So we don't know. We are just going to take a step at a time. We will just hang out and rebuild.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KING: You heard the Phillips there. They say they will rebuild and stay nearby in that same neighborhood, Anderson. I met a woman, Renee Myers who put her husband in the hospital because he was having heart trouble. She was grateful for that so she didn't have to try to get him out as the storm came in.
She came back to the debris of her small modest home today trying to find her dog. Jackson or Bo, she calls him Bo. I helped her son who came by, too, go through the rubble. He was trying to move some heavy things so I helped him to try to find the little kennel. We found the kennel and the door was open.
Renee Myers says, you know, he could kick the door open so she was hopeful. As you see people come back to these neighborhoods to nothing, to houses that are turned into splinters. That is what they are hoping for, maybe to find a pet or old China or jewelry, to find something for the memories.
But Anderson, as you noted so many of them who have lived through this before including the big one back in '99 this devastation here now they say they love this community. It's where they go to church and their kids go to school and they plan on staying.
COOPER: Yes, John, we are going to be talking to you more throughout the day as we hear from more people. John makes an important point, people searching not just for their family members, but also for their four-legged family members, their pets. A lot of people have come up to me talking to me about the animals that they are looking for, a lot of shelters trying to collect the animals and reunite them to their owners.
We are going to speak live with the governor who served Oklahoma back in 1999 and talk about comparisons to that storm then. We'll talk about also the recovery process, lessons learned from back then and whether these neighborhoods should be rebuilt. We'll be right back.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We saw it coming and got louder. Next thing you know you see it coming undone. It ripped open the door and it was glass and debris on us.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COOPER: Welcome back to our continuing coverage of the Oklahoma tornado here in Moore, Oklahoma. We just got a word from the National Weather Service that says the speed of the peak wind yesterday in this tornado that hit Moore was 190 miles per hour. That is how strong it was.
This is not the first time this area has been hit by a powerful tornado as we were talking about with John King back in May of 1999. An EF-5 tornado ripped through the area, in and around Moore, killed 36 people. It was on the ground for nearly 90 minutes.
If you take a look at this map the path of the '99 tornado in red and the one that tore through here yesterday in green struck some of the same areas. The 1999 tornado destroyed more than 1,000 homes in Moore. Another tornado hit in 2003. It damaged property, injured dozens of people. Thankfully back then no one was killed.
Right now, the death toll is 24 here in Moore. The searches are still underway. Frank Keating was the governor of Oklahoma 14 years ago when that EF-5 twister struck the area. He joins me now from Washington.
Governor, it's good to see you. You have been through this before. What lessons have you learned that would be most helpful right now?
FRANK KEATING, GOVERNOR OF OKLAHOMA, 1995-2003: Well, a variety of lessons and by the way, Anderson, thank you and John for being there. I am in the wrong city. You are in the right city. We are all grateful that you are there.
But the most important thing is to make sure that the Emergency Management folks know each other, coordinate, are speaking on the same frequency and can respond to a man made or natural disaster. You have a multitude of jurisdictions. Moore is a separate city. Oklahoma City, obviously, other communities around to coordinate with FEMA as Mary Fallin, the governor has done, to partner with the National Guard and the local police, and the state highway patrol.
It's very important because people want a sense of security. We have no looting after the Oklahoma City bombing. We had to my knowledge no looting after the May 3rd, 1999 level 5 tornado. I would hope this would be the same. People pitch in to help one another, but you need coordinated professionals to help them, hold hands with them and make sure they can see the light at the end of the tunnel, something I'm sure is going on right now.
COOPER: Yes, and from a security standpoint we are seeing kind of a lockdown in the area. Just to get into this area, you know, there are road blocks and National Guard troops. It feels pretty good from a security standpoint. Can really people prepare for a storm this powerful? I mean, if you are living in this area is there much you can really prepare for?
KEATING: Well, the wonderful thing about Moore and also the challenge is that this is a community of many older people. I have been informed by some of the social service providers that a number of the older people to save $100 a month, working class families, to save that $100 a month they cancel the property insurance. This is not good.
There are a number of renters obviously who don't have rental insurance. Some people have let the property and casualty insurance lapse. What we are trying to do with the Salvation Army and Red Cross is raise the funds necessary to provide a bridge assistance to a lot of these families.
Because the fact is to be prepared means you need to have property and casualty insurance with tornado coverage, virtually everybody does. To be prepared means in the future to have a storm shelter. They cost between $4,000 and $6,000 fully installed. To take your most precious possessions down into the cellar makes a lot of sense.
There needs to be another conversation after this tornado and its cleanup. For example, sheltering in place, how can we best secure the lives of children in schools? Do we need to take another look at the structural soundness of these individual school buildings? Those are the kinds of things, Anderson, we need to do and I'm sure we will do because very good people are in charge.
COOPER: Yes, that is an important conversation to have. Governor Keating, I appreciate you taking the time to talk with us. Thank you very much.
KEATING: Thank you, Anderson. Appreciate it.
COOPER: It is an emotional moment caught on camera. We have seen so many. The emotions are running high here. A woman searching for her dog in the rubble of her home got a great surprise live on the air. A bit of good news in all of this tragedy that is next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COOPER: When you see the kind of wreckage that's around for block after block after block, you wonder how anybody can live through it. This used to be a bowling alley. Obviously, it was empty during the time. You can see the bowling balls all around the terminals where people would use to get the scores and play games.
One woman actually found her dog while she was being interviewed live on television. It was a great moment that was captured. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BARBARA GARCIA, TORNADO SURVIVOR: I was holding my dog. I was sitting on the stool holding my dog. This was the game plan all through the years to go in that little bathroom. And the electric never went off because the electric went off in the bathroom about the same time I felt the stool come up out of the floor. And I've rolled around a little bit and when it stopped I was right there. The cooker is what I saw.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You were lying there in the rubble.
GARCIA: I never lost consciousness and I hollered for my little dog and he didn't answer or didn't come so I know he is in here somewhere.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The dog, the dog. Hi, puppy.
GARCIA: Bless your little bitty heart. Help me. Come on. I thought God just answered one prayer to let me be OK. He answered both of them because this was my second prayer.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COOPER: Her prayer was answered, an amazing moment. The rain is coming down pretty hard here for the last hour or so. Severe weather threatening other major cities right now. We'll bring you an update next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COOPER: Continuing to rain and thunder and lightning here is making it a miserable day in Moore for the rescuers and searchers who are still out there combing through the rubble trying to find anyone who is still missing.
Chad Myers joins us in the Weather Center. Chad, give us an overview of what the weather is like and what it will be like for the next 24 hours or so.
CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: It will get better for you. There is still a little bit of lightning in your area. I can even hear the thunder there. I'll show you where the lightning strike was. It wasn't far from you, Anderson. But most of the weather will be down south towards Shreveport and Little Rock today.
We zoom right into Newcastle, Moore, Oklahoma City and there is Moore right there. That lightning strike was about four miles to the northwest of you and there is still going to be more weather here across parts of -- the upper part, the northern part of Central Texas. Other than that we are about done for where you are at this point.
The U.S. has more tornadoes than any country in the world because of a couple of things, cold air in the mountains coming down from the north, a warm Gulf of Mexico and also dry air that can come out of the mountains.
Let me show you what this picture looked like yesterday at about 3:40 local time. Here is Oklahoma City. Here is what we call the debris ball, the debris in the air that the radar was seeing thinking it could be rain. But then we looked at it in a different direction and we knew that it wasn't rain. It was actually the debris from the tornado.
We are going to put this into three dimensions. You can see up to 17,000 feet, 20,000 feet the debris in the air flying through the air circulating around the tornado and falling back to earth due to gravity. An amazing three dimensional shot of what this tornado looked at.
We are not looking at hail or rain. We are looking at debris in the air as it was sucked thousands of feet, tens of thousands of feet up into the sky. We even had some reports yesterday up in Tulsa that they were finding postcards and pictures from this tornado almost 100 miles away, things getting sucked out of the storm into the sky and blown down wind 100 miles -- Anderson.
COOPER: And that debris, it is so dangerous, so deadly. Here is a bowling ball, one of the many bowling balls laying around here from this bowling alley. You can imagine what would happen with this being picked up by the storm.
Coming up next, a really an emotional moment involving Navy reservists in the middle of the debris with an American flag. We'll show you that ahead.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: I had to hold on to the wall to keep myself safe because I didn't want to fly away in the tornado.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We had to pull a car out of the front hallway off a teacher. I don't know what that lady's name is, but she had three little kids underneath her.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COOPER: You can find all sorts of items and possessions amidst the debris. Some are personal possessions that can bring hope or joy to an individual or family. Some are personal possessions that can bring hope to the entire community. Take a look what Navy reservists found last night amidst the debris.
