Oklahoma City Tornado: 91 Feared Killed By Massive Twister

More than 20 children are among 91 feared dead in the Oklahoma City tornado that flattened a school with an entire year of pupils inside. Rescuers are frantically seaching for survivors after a the ferocious storm ripped through a region of the US known as Tornado Alley.

The kids aged 8 and 9 at Plaza Towers Elementary School sheltered in a hallway as 200MPH gales - less than 1 per cent of all tornadoes reach such wind speed - ripped through the building in the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore.

Around 24 of those children were believed to have been killed although there was some hope for parents last night as some kids previously believed to be missing for were found sheltering in a local church.

Around 75 pupils and teachers remained in the school as the older children were removed before the storm hit.

Block after block of the devastated town lay in ruins. Homes were crushed into piles of broken wood. Cars and trucks were left crumpled on the roadside.

 

 

Children clung onto walls as the school was destroyed and rescue workers were seen pulling survivors from the wreckage. Rescuers launched a desperate rescue effort at the elementary school, pulling children from heaps of debris and carrying them to a local medical centre.

Photographer Sue Ogrocki, who was on the scene, described the horror, saying: "Police and firefighters used bars to try to lift a large chunk of a wall up as they pulled children out one-by-one from underneath."

 

 

 

 

"Parents and neighborhood residents stood in a line helping to pass the children from one set of arms to another out of harm’s way."

"A little boy was lifted from under the wall and rescuers were going to start passing him to the line of volunteers, but his dad was there. 

 

 

 

 

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