Susan, I am seeing them on TV and I think I see concrete saferooms in some of them. Have seen kids outside one of the schools though don't know if they were students from that school. They kids don't look injured.Info is sketchy. I posted what I saw on the Moore OK tornado thread.

Dawn

Yes, I saw the students, too. Don't know if they were all uninjured or if some were. OKC has NO public shelters - I think that is something we need to address in the future......

Thanks for the continuing updates. Oh triage is at the Warren Theatre.

Susan

The fact that it followed the same path might mean those schools had tornado shelters. I hope so.

Me, too, Lisa.

ORR Family Farms stables hit, stables gone. 75-100 horses killed.

Susan

Some kids still in rubble st this school. They were taking shelter in their designated safe spot in a hallway. There are no "hallways" left standing. Emergency responders are digging thru debris right now.

Susan

Students all accounted for. Plaza Towers school - K - 3rd grade still missing in rubble. Hysterical parents waiting for news - can you blame them? Bringing in a tractor to assist in removing debris.......very carefully. I'm praying for all.

Susan

OMG.

Susan, Thanks for the updates.

I have been, alternately, in the tornado shelter (until I knew our storm was going too far NE to worry me), herding chickens into their coop and closing it up, putting up dogs and cats in their safe place in closets and bathrooms and then letting angry dogs and cats back out into the house once the threat passed.....another storm better not come this way again because I don't think I'll get any cooperation from our pets if I have to put them up again. I just want them in a place where they would be safe from flying debris and glass, but they aren't impressed with my plans.

I was trying to stay busy enough that I wouldn't think about those schools and those kids while sitting in the shelter. Usually the laptop doesn't pick up the wireless signal once I go in there so I can't catch much news. Sounds like I missed a lot.

So grateful the kids are accounted for at the one school. Praying hard for the safety of the kids at the other school. I'd be concerned too if I was a parent.

WHY in the world do all the schools in OKC-Moore not have safe rooms or inground shelters? Did we learn nothing from the last time OKC-Moore took a major hit? I am stunned to learn that maybe they don't.

If I ran the world, I'd mandate a storm shelter in every school and, for as far as that goes, in every residence. I don't know why OK building codes do not mandate the shelters. We know we have tornadoes here frequently enough to justify requiring shelters.

Those poor parents. I cannot even imagine how they feel.

Dawn

I agree with mandating underground shelters - halls USED to hold, but the storms are worse, the debris unbelievable.

At least 4 of our unit's staff members have lost homes. One of them is with our director - she has found her daughter, but cannot locate her 8 yr old son - at the Plaza Tower school.

I am overwhelmed, but I am praying for the children, for their families, for the teachers, and for the search crews and other first responders on the scene.

Sharon

This will my second post try. There are kids needing there family at 145 Vicky drive in moore 1/4 mile from the school.
They r n a personal house.

Sharon, I hope their child is okay, too. He is in that age group of those still missing in the rubble. Everybody keep those prayers going for all affected by the tornado.....

Dawn, so glad you are safe....again. I know you'll be glad when this weather pattern breaks. My cats run and hide...I would never find them in time, wah!!!!!

Susan

Dawn;

Keep us updated. It's not over, I see. I look at the tornado reports and just want to scream, "Just stop already. Give us a chance to breath."

The kids they have interviewed say they had to go to halls and bathrooms I'm trying to post more but now my comp is freezing up. Now there say ing the corner of 156 of vicky drive

Be careful all trying to save pets. There was a man who died in the Joplin tornado trying to get his two small dogs in. The dogs lived. Also I am sure there were cats lost in the Joplin tornado but there were cats living in the rubble months after and a group feeding them and trying to catch them. One 20 pound cat was found weighing 4 or 5 pounds months after the storm. Some people in the heart of the severe damage eventually found their cats. Dogs don't always fare so well. I know one couple who were trying to catch their daughter's cat that they were keeping as the tornado was passing by. I think the daughter would have had them go to the basement. Fortunately they weren't hit.

AN OLD FRIEND JUST POSTED tELEPHONE dRIVE THEY FOUND 3 DEAD ONE BABY 2 ADULTS AT A 711
sorry my comp is messing up. The store was gone.

Anyone trying to locate someone go to the link posted

Here is a link that might be useful: finding loved ones and friends in aftermath

Search and rescue now a search and recovery. 24 3rd graders unaccounted for. Cannot believe this has happened. Heart goes out to survivors, parents, responders.......

Susan

Oh my. Speechless.

Just heard an update from News 9 and all but 4 children have been accounted for. Still getting conflicting info. They are still actively searching.

I don't whether to throw up or cry. My own g-son was at Fisher and was unaccounted for a short time. I thought my heart was going to stop. Prayers are needed for EVERYONE in the Moore area. My own parents are still waiting at my sister's to get the "all clear" to see if they have a home. They live off 12th & Eastern.

Yet another sister is in Respitory and Emergency Management. Hospital counts are going up...and they include children.

Prayers for everyone.

Paula

9 year. Old Kaylie Hawkins needs het parents to get her from Norman Regional Hospital - she is okay!

I don't know if any of this info is helping or not, but I feel like I have to do something......

7 children just found at bottom of flooded portion of school. All drowned. Why?? Omg!! Heartbreaking news. Still several children unaccounted for.

What else is there left to say? Too horrific for words. So much pain, misery and broken hearts in OK here lately.

A friend over on the plumeria forum is from Moore. His name is Allan. we haven't heard from him yet. praying it only because of power or cell issue.

Lord be with them all!!

Mike

My heart goes out to all of them. I also get mad because I think man is being a very bad steward of this world. I feel we should be doing things worldwide in an effort to improve out environment., rather that fatten our pocket books.

Larry

Amen, Larry.

Mike, I also have s Kindle Fire HD and am so grateful for it. It stays charged for 11 hours...... our land lines were down until just recently. And folks are having problems with cell coverage and jammed towers. So communication issues abound.

Hope you hear from your friend soon.

Paula hope your family is ok.
I'm like dawn I just had to stop watching. My old computer is just barley working my service comes from OKC and my TV didn't want to work, also OKC. I need a Weather radio.
Last year when that big twister went just south of the house I couldn't even get to my outside basement. I just had to throw all the pets in the tub even bird (not snake) even cat knew I was scared and didn't try to kill bird( I think animales sence things) can imagine how scared all those people were.
TREE

Paula, Please let us know what your parents find when they are able to see their home again. I am hoping and praying their home is still standing. I was so relieved when you posted that that your grandson was okay.

If there is anything we can do to help anyone......somebody please let us know.

Tree, Please get a weather radio. Or, if you have a smartphone you can get many aps that will give you weather warnings right on your phone. Most local TV stations have APs like that.

I agree with you that animals sense things. One of our cats, in particular, goes berserk when severe weather conditions abound. For the last two days he has been so jumpy that he's been untouchable....you cannot pick him up, can't pet him, and I couldn't even get him to come inside yesterday until about 10 pm. Normally he is a big, cuddly bundle of fur but bad weather makes him antsy and he turns wild. Today, for his own sake, I am not even letting him go outside. He seems calmer today, but our weather risk remains sort of high today.

I cannot imagine the fear that everyone experienced. I simply cannot imagine all those sweet little kids frantically trying to stay safe. Two of them were interviewed on CBS News this morning, and watching the kids describe what they went through made me tear up. They are the lucky ones---no matter what they went through, they survived.

Earlier I heard the Lt. Gov. say that searchers found 101 more people alive in the rubble overnight, including some still trapped in storm shelters (presumably with debris on top of doors so they couldn't get out). What a sweet moment it must have been for those 101 people and their loved ones once they were found.

The death toll from the school still stands at 7. While that is horrible and heart-breaking, I just can't help thinking how much worse it could have been.

I have no doubt that the Moore community will rebound. They will pull together (they already have!), they will help each other and they will rebuild. When they do so, I hope every single rebuilt structure has an in-ground storm shelter or safe room.

No community should have to go through this multiple times like Moore has.

Dawn

I haven't seen this on here yet, in addition to what Dawn said, CBS news is reporting that the medial examiners office is saying the confirmed number of dead is 24, not the 51 that has been reported. Still too many, but smaller than originally thought. They think there were duplicate reports in all the confusion yesterday.

Yes, because in these disaster situations, where it's likely debris will cover shelter doors, each county has a registry to record gate numbers, details of location of shelter on property, and emergency contact information that can be, with the individual or group's authorization, be entered in the CAD system for aid in a quicker response time and notification of emergency contacts. It is my understanding that the CAD system (computer aided design) then creates a technical drawing of the property that indicates the location of the shelter.

I'm sure this helps but when there is so much debris and rubble, and absolutely everything is leveled, I don't know how they locate a shelter on completely unrecognizable property.

Susan

Susan,

GPS is used to obtain geographic coordinates (latitude and longitude) of the locations of storm shelters. This information along with other pertinent data is input into a Geographic Information System (GIS) to document the location of storm shelters. When an event occurs such as that in Moore, then first responders are able to use GPS to navigate to the location of the storm shelters even though they are covered up with debris. This is very important when individual houses and even streets are unrecognizable. (I've worked in the recovery stage addressing drinking water systems in two tornado effected locations and two hurricane locations. The chaos and destruction in the debris field can be very disorienting.) This is probably how the first responders are finding these trapped people. I recommend registering your storm shelter location with your County Emergency Management/911 Coordinator. I did so a couple of years ago.

Just so ya'll know, my main business other than growing a market garden and selling at the farmers market, is mapping water and wastewater infrastructure using GPS and GIS. To a lesser extent I have also worked with County 911 Coordinators with data acquisition and management.

I should add, sometimes in the registry process the person doing the mapping of the storm shelters is able to use aerial photos and "heads up digitizing" based upon information given over the phone. They do not necessarily need to go on-site with a GPS. Storm shelters are pretty visible on today's aerial photos used as basemaps in GIS systems. The mapping can be done using these aerial photos.

I think it is voluntary to register a shelter or safe room, but I simply cannot imagine why anyone who has one would not register it. I want everyone to know where our shelter is....not just so they can come find us if the door is pinned shut by debris, but also so anyone nearby who needs shelter ASAP can come here. In our neighborhood, everyone with shelters and storm shelters has made it know that folks without such shelters have a standing invitation to come join us in the shelters. On the other hand, in a really rural county like ours where everybody knows everybody, pretty much everyone already knows who has a shelter and who doesn't anyway. I've had neighbors come rushing over to get in the shelter on days I didn't think the storms warranted that degree of concern---but they still are welcome to come sit in the shelter even if I am not there.

Having the list of registered storm shelters is great because you know to check those for survivors, but you still are going to have to do a search for every single inch of property in each box on the grid when you are doing a grid search during SAR. Sometimes you have people in an area where no one is known to live, though that is less of an issue now than it was prior to the mapping done for E-911.

We have physical MAPSCO type map books with box/grid maps for our county and I try to remember to take my map book to the shelter when I go. The same info is available online and can be accessed very easily that way, but we still need the books in case power is out, cell towers are down and computer access is otherwise disrupted.

Even before we had GIS, we had physical lists of shelter locations on paper. It is just that the newer technology is easier to update and easier to use. Plus, you were in trouble if your list got lost during a storm recovery period.

Is the info public or not, Dawn? If not, people like me, in the city, wouldn't know where a shelter is unless I am specifically acquainted with the neighbors that have them - a definite drawback of city life. As I mentioned earlier, OKC has NO public shelters, unless you know of a place that just happens to have a big ole basement. The house next door to me has a basement and I knew the person who owned it. He always said we could use it in an emergency and it was never locked. However, he sold it just last summer and now I don't know where we would go. Hmmmm.

I'm sure there are others in the same predicament in the city. I always heard fire stations were a safe place to go, but don't know if that is fact or fiction. A lot of older churches were built with basements back in the day. Used to be when I worked downtown, we sheltered in the tunnel. That's too far away to get to in a hurry now. I will have to ponder this.....

Susan

Not my business but I would buy a shelter and make payments. I bought a small metal shelter which is bolted to his garage floor for my friend in Joplin because I happened to be at his house during both big tornadoes here. I don't have a shelter here at my house but my basement is probably three feet under ground level and if I don't get an F5 I feel pretty safe in it. If you rent, I don't know what you do. In my opinion the shelter pays for itself whether or not you use it. We have too many warnings here and you probably have more there. The stress is not good for you. Too many nights I am in the basement with my dogs and the weather radio. It would be too hard to run to a church or other building every time. You can see your tornadoes there. The big tornadoes here were in pouring rain and people thought they were just a big dark cloud. Maybe you would have more time because it is wide open and flat there.

We have very few shelters in our neighborhood. Our shelter is above ground and the access is through the house so our neighbors have a key. Sunday afternoon my husband got a call on his cell phone from a neighbor asking if it was OK to go in our house if the weather got worse. Since that is the reason we gave them the key, the phone call wasn't necessary, but I guess they wanted to let us know. They were not expecting us to come home, but we were actually only about an hour and a half from home when they called. None of us required the shelter that day, but it was ready just the same.

Our shelter is equipped with food and water and other emergency supplies, plus a change of clothing for each of us. We even have a small Coleman portable potty, still in the box, that has the storage tank on the bottom. Our shelter is above ground and the door opens to the inside, so it isn't likely we would be trapped, but we have tried to equip it with enough survival supplies that we could remain on-site and no one would have to look for us in the event of a serious disaster.

Susan, I hope you can find a shelter.

If any of you don't have a shelter, call your County Commissioner's office and see if they are involved in a FEMA program to help fund the cost of a private shelter. If they have enough interest, they can apply for the grant program. It takes about a year to get all of it done, but if you don't have means to have one any other way, and own your own property, it would be worthwhile to check on it. You have to wait until they tell you that you are approved, then you must build an approved shelter. They will inspect it and record the GPS location at the end. The dollars available will vary, and it will be a flat rate. I have seen it pay enough to cover half the cost of a simple underground shelter. It is not based on your ability, or inability, to pay but is a grant offered by FEMA to increase the number of available shelters for safety reasons. Counties don't always want to do it because the paperwork load is huge, so they may have to be 'encouraged' a little.

Susan, I doubt the shelter lists are public, though I am not sure. They exist so that emergency personnel will know to search for a storm shelter, home cellar or safe room underneath all the rubble on a given piece of property in case someone is trapped inside a shelter because heavy debris is on top of it. The lists are not intended to be used as a guide so people can find someone else's private storm shelter to use.

Public shelters are increasingly rare nowadays, particularly new ones. The trend is towards people having personal storm shelters put on their own property, preferably close to an exterior doorway or to have them built into the home as hardened safe rooms.

The public shelters in our area are mostly basements built as far back as statehood and they would not come even close to holding a significant percentage of today's population of the communities in which they are located. There are issues with using them, not the least of which is that some people tear them up and leave them filled with trash. Some communities have become so frustrated with this poor behavior on the part of people using the shelters that they have threatened to close down the public shelters and stop using them, and I cannot say that I blame them.

I never have understood why the building codes in OK do not mandate that a hardened safe room or storm shelter be included in every newly-constructed private residence, day care or school. People will argue that there is no need to "waste" money on a shelter that you might never need, but I feel like it is a small investment that would have a high pay-off---saving lives.

Here where we live, some people have had in-ground shelters on their property for decades, but there are just as many who have put them in only recently....since the 1999 tornadoes, and then it seemed we saw a lot more of them go in not too long after the EF-4 tornado hit Lone Grove in Carter County a little over 4 years ago. If I didn't take tornadoes pretty seriously before, I took them real seriously after seeing parts of Lone Grove flattened and people killed.

Carol, My storm shelter is not as well outfitted as yours, but it is pretty close. Tim and Chris always are surprised at all the supplies I have in there. I just want to know we have what we need if we emerge one day from the shelter to discover our home is gone.

Our county has participated in the FEMA shelter grant program a couple of times, but it can be very difficult for a community to get the FEMA grants. The competition between communities to get the grant programs approved for their citizens is fierce. When you get the funding, there's always far more people applying for grants than there is grant money available.

Oh, and Susan mentioned fire stations. While some undoubtedly served as shelters in the past, that also is becoming a relic of the past. Among other things, there's liability issues. In communities where you have volunteer fire departments, it is hard to scrape together enough money to build a station, much less to be able to afford to put in a storm shelter of any kind. Our fire station is one of the newest in the county, and it does not have a hardened safe room or in-ground shelter. I have been lobbying the chief for some time to at least put in a shelter large enough to protect the firefighters who go to the station to sound the storm sirens and to do storm spotting. As it is right now, if they spot a tornado coming their way while they are at the station, they really have no place to go to ensure their own safety. That drives me up the wall....cause you know I am at home in the shelter and I am calling or texting Tim and telling him "there is rotation in the sky confirmed by a trained storm spotter one mile from our house and you need to get home and get in this shelter now". Does he do it? Absolutely not. That is why we need a shelter at the station....for the firefighters who are serving the public. Or, if our guys can raise the money to put in a large public shelter to serve the community, then more power to them. However, fire stations in general are not designed to be public shelters in these days and times.

Dawn

My understanding is that the location of registered private storm shelters is kept confidential. At least it is in the county where I live. This fact is emphasized to encourage folks to register their shelters.

As Dawn described above, there are quite a few issues which discourage the building of public shelters. The cost, do they stay open all the time or are they locked at times, who opens them, they have to be handicap accessible, capacity, are pets allowed or not, parking, liability issues...the list goes on. That said, I believe that pubic shelters should be built into new public buildings whenever possible and legislation enacted to relieve the governmental entities involved (city, county) of the liability. Some things are messy and will never be perfect, but still something is better than nothing.

All schools should be required to have shelters before any money can be spent on construction of additional sports related buildings or infrastructure. No more football, basketball or baseball infrastructure until adequate shelters are constructed. We would have shelters at every school within 5 years.