Fox Business
Expand
Browse All Video
Watch Live

You're watching...

Killer Tornadoes Continue to Slam Midwest

Details

  • Description

    Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett on the devastating storms and cleanup efforts.

  • Duration 5:39
  • Date

Clips

Also in this playlist...

Latest Video

Auto-advance: ON

Auto-advance
View All

Transcript

This transcript is automatically generated

And we are kicking off tonight with the disaster in the midwest just amazing new videos being released today showing the chilling power of those.

Mega twisters that have been devastating the midwest.

And in the heart of the zone is a good friend of scoreboard Oklahoma City mayor Mick Cornett who joins us now with a very.

Latest details on what's happening mayor thank you so much for coming -- I don't know here.

Very busy how bad is it.

While David death the tornadoes -- the the metropolitan area of Oklahoma City but did hit in the in the far reaching rural areas Oklahoma City was very fortunate that.

It went north and south and even.

He's status but the city was spared once again we were fortunate.

You know I think one thing that jumped out at me when I was -- looking at all this and watching the coverage last night is how far we've come with the technology.

When I broke into the television industry thirty years ago it was a rare moment if -- photographer actually captured footage of a tornado.

Today with the science of advancing so far and the number of Storm Chasers increasing so much.

Now the cameras are pointed at the clouds waiting for the tornadoes to come out of the sky and that advance warning certainly helps our citizens evade the terror of the tornadoes.

And secondly -- provides incredible pictures in the news media picks up on it.

And and -- these pictures all over the country and -- it it it makes for good television but it also I think sends the message.

That there's a lot more tornadoes out there than there probably earliest but as as advances all the technology is it still can't stop the death and destruction -- with a hundred.

124 people are killed in Joplin just a couple of days before by the way.

Were any of your emergency rescue vehicles or people.

Involved in trying to help out the folks in Joplin and are are you having to bring them back in a hurry.

Well sort of what happened was also some some people to help in Joplin and we sent some people to help -- -- that this -- kind of a back up system so there was some movement around.

Based on Joplin.

But -- in -- -- sense that they the warning system from the Joplin media was just not as -- what it is in Oklahoma City with a severe storms laboratory located in our metro.

And the television stations using so many -- as the helicopters the advance storm warnings.

In Oklahoma City what you have is an is an incredible emphasis on whether coverage.

And I don't know any of the national networks picked up our local affiliates and we're showing -- around the country and so I -- advance warning is so important because.

At the end of the -- people in Oklahoma City in this metro area take all of this information and make their own decisions on -- best to do to -- the trouble well as ordinary in order to -- city we didn't have a problem this is extremely important because there's still so many storms yet to happen and as we've seen how how destructive they are a lot of towns in that area where which is susceptible to these things are wondering what to do what would you advise they do as they rebuilt.

Well I fortunately I I think that first of all television stations have a responsibility to have a meteorologists on staff.

And I know a lot of smaller markets that's not feasible or not done especially if you're a part of the country that didn't have a whole lot of severe weather but I think having trained meteorologists in your media is very important.

But but don't underestimate the power of television when it comes to getting people the information they need you can't build shelters for large metropolitan areas there's no way Joplin -- prepared for that all they could have done was give people advance warning and let them pick the best job they could try to get out of the way.

In that specific instance it was a very broad tornado one that would have been extremely difficult under any circumstances to -- by the way another thing in television does is tell the stories of of heroism some remarkable stories like for example in Joplin.

That Pizza Hut manager that managed to get all of his staff into this -- shelter this -- cold storage closet.

Unfortunately he didn't get himself in Beyer and time because you're so worried about -- staff.

He eventually was sucked up by their tornados and was killed -- -- -- -- similar stories of heroism where you -- Well we have before and in almost in an ideal circumstances you do have people who -- manage restaurants that we'll try and get people into a meat locker because.

You know those those safe rooms those those meat lockers those types of environments will survive a tornado.

In Oklahoma people generally know which part of the house to be -- they know which closet in advance they would ever go away and if a tornado were to come.

That's why would you see such devastating pictures and all you see is lumber laying in the in a grassy field.

At a person walked out of that.

It's because they knew it had prepared what's part of the of the structure they were going to be -- If that tornado came and time after time he -- incredible stories of complete destruction.

But -- say you know what finally -- you work fortunate and in a certain area in terms of that storm not going directly over Oklahoma City but it was still a deadly storm.

In your area are there individuals missing we know that despite the big count in Joplin.

What's really concerned is that there there -- over a thousand people missing is that the same in Oklahoma.

The last I heard there was a young person that was still missing and the death count was relatively low especially when you're when you're considering become the comparison to Joplin.

The F for that went through rule Oklahoma last night would've been.

Devastating if it had gone through the city you know in our cities a 130 year history we've had one F five tornado that was back in 1999.

It -- mixed enormous damage.

The Joplin tornadoes going to be at least an F -- I think when they finally measured in -- those are really really dangerous well best of luck to -- -- our condolences for those who were injured and died and again best luck in the future.

Mick Cornett mayor of Oklahoma City thank you very much.

Load More