EmergencyNet NEWS Service-Tuesday, May 4, 1999-18:16CDT

OKLAHOMA CITY (EmergencyNet News) - Forty-three people were feared killed and hundreds more were missing or injured on Tuesday after dozens of tornadoes ran through Oklahoma and Kansas with an intensity so fierce entire communities were wiped out. Thousands of homes and businesses were leveled and Oklahoma Governor Frank  Keating said there were "dozens of pages" of names of people who were not accounted for.

OKLAHOMA CITY (EmergencyNet News) - The pack of tornadoes that tore through the Midwest left at least 43 people dead, making them the deadliest storms in nearly 15 years. The death toll is the highest for a weather-related disaster since 1985, when storms killed 90 people in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Ontario. And Oklahoma authorities say the death toll is expected to rise because destruction is just "so massive." The National Weather Service says the biggest twister formed about 45 miles southwest of Oklahoma City. Entire neighborhoods were wiped out, officials said. Mobile homes were tossed around like tin cans.

WASHINGTON (EmergencyNet News) - The President of the United States on Tuesday rushed to provide emergency assistance to tornado-ravaged Oklahoma, declaring that a major disaster exists in the Plains state. He was expected to make a similar declaration for Kansas, also hit hard by tornadoes, when the state submits a request for immediate disaster relief.

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From the ERRI Watch Center

OKLAHOMA CITY (EmergencyNet News) - Forty-three people were feared killed and hundreds more were missing or injured on Tuesday after dozens of tornadoes tore through Oklahoma and Kansas with an intensity so fierce entire communities were wiped out. Thousands of homes and businesses were leveled and Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating said there were "dozens of pages" of names of people who were not accounted for.

Ben Frizzell, an Oklahoma Emergency Management official, said: "Some .. tornadoes came up so quickly and were so intense that there was no way people could get out of harm's way." Entire neighborhoods were destroyed in Oklahoma City and rescue officials cordoned off a 12-square-mile section of the city as the National Guard combed the rubble for survivors. The Oklahoma City suburb of Moore resembled a war zone of wrecked and leveled buildings. National Guard officials could not confirm television reports of looting there.

Hospitals in the Oklahoma City metro area treated 563 people for tornado-related injuries.

The parking lot of West Moore High School was strewn with over-turned cars. But officials talked of a miracle at the school. Its roof was blown off and windows shattered by high tornado winds while 300 students, parents and teachers attended an assembly. There were only minor injuries.

Several other communities in central Oklahoma were reduced to fields of rubble as three dozen tornadoes cut their swathes of destruction, hurling vehicles into the air and toppling houses as if they were made of matchsticks. Whole sub-divisions of neat single-story homes crumbled under winds that reached more than

200-miles-an-hour in a show of deadly force in a region of the U.S. known as "Tornado Alley." Some weather experts speculated that some of the twisters were force five tornadoes whose winds start at more than 200 mph and can top 300 mph.

Rescue teams, working with search dogs and heavy equipment, sifted through vast fields of rubble in the search for more victims. First light brought the scope of Monday's disaster clearly into focus. Trees, stripped bare of their leaves and bark, lay on top of twisted debris that was once suburban homes.

ESR CLOSE UP

OKLAHOMA CITY (EmergencyNet News) - A series of massive tornadoes swept through the U.S. heartland on Monday, killing at least 45 people, injuring hundreds and destroying thousands of homes. The huge storm system, described by weather forecasters as a "super outbreak of tornadoes," moved across Oklahoma and Kansas in a deadly blow that spread destruction across hundreds of miles and into dozens of communities.

The hardest hit areas were the Oklahoma City area and Wichita, Kansas, where entire neighborhoods were completely destroyed. Fires broke out and were fed by broken natural gas lines.

Dramatic television videos showed the huge funnels lumbering through towns and open land, sending up whirling clouds of debris and showers of blue sparks as they snapped power lines in two.

The death toll was likely to rise as rescuers, hampered by downed power lines and scattered debris, searched on foot through the devastated areas.

Weather forecasters said the group of storms that hit the region were of F-5 strength capable of causing devastating damage. Forecasters said it was possible some areas could have been hit with a force of intensity F-6, considered catastrophic.

The wounded overwhelmed local medical facilities, where doctors and nurses did their best to treat them. A spokeswoman for Hillcrest Health Center in Oklahoma City, said the hospital was so full that patients were being treated in the hospital cafeteria. At least 150 people were treated at the hospital. Tuesday morning reports said that more than 500 people, overall, were injured in Oklahoma.

Oklahoma City police Captain Charles Allen said a tornado tore through 13 miles of the city, destroying everything in its path. He said: "Entire neighborhoods were destroyed. An entire residential area was flattened." He estimated that 1,000 homes had been leveled. In the suburb of Del City, 750 homes were reportedly destroyed.

About 150 miles due north, a tornado spawned by the same storm system tossed mobile homes like tin cans, damaged houses and killed at least five people in Wichita, Kansas, and its southern suburb of Haysville. Hospitals reported treating more than 80 people. Several mobile homes in south Wichita were blown into a lake.

The governor of Oklahoma, Frank Keating, ordered out the National Guard to keep order and help search for victims. As many as four dozen tornadoes were spotted across the region, but more were spotted throughout the night as the storm marched across the states of Oklahoma and Kansas and dipped down into north Texas. The tornadoes were massive and deadly, spreading a mile across the land and stretching ten miles into the sky.

In Oklahoma, the main tornado formed near Chickasha, about 45 miles southwest of the capital city. It skipped its way across the flat Oklahoma countryside, toppling trees, power lines, outbuildings and cars until it ripped into south Oklahoma City. In Kansas, Wichita's tornado tore a ten-mile path that reached 3 1/4 miles wide. Smaller twisters struck Sumner and Butler counties, as well as other parts of Sedgwick County, but none caused substantial damage or injuries.