Cost of tornado’s devastation could reach £1.3bn say experts

The tally is based on visual assessments of the extensive damage zone stretching more than 17 miles and the fact that the tornado was on the ground for 40 minutes.

An Oklahoma Insurance Department spokeswoman said the financial cost of Monday’s tornado in Moore could be greater than that from the 2011 tornado that killed 158 people in Joplin, Missouri.

With no reports of anyone still missing and with the death toll at 24 people, nine of them children, authorities and residents have turned toward assessing the damage and plotting a future course for Moore, a town of about 56,000 which was also hit by a massive tornado in 1999.

Authorities have yet to present concrete numbers for how many homes were damaged or destroyed, but the view from the air shows whole neighbourhoods obliterated, with gouged earth littered with splintered wood and pulverized cars.

Rescue workers have been searching tirelessly for survivors and victims, and they planned to keep going – sometimes double and triple-checking home sites. They were not certain how many homes were destroyed or how many families had been displaced. Emergency workers had trouble navigating devastated areas because there were no street signs left. Some rescuers used smartphones or GPS devices to guide them through areas with no recognisable landmarks.

Moore fire chief Gary Bird said he was confident there are no more bodies or survivors in the rubble. Every damaged home had been searched at least once, he said, but his goal was to conduct three searches of each building.

From the air, large stretches Moore could be seen where every home had been cut to pieces. Some homes were sucked off their concrete slabs. A pond was filled with piles of wood and an overturned trailer. Also visible were large patches of red earth where the tornado scoured the land down to the soil. Some tree trunks were still standing, but the winds ripped away their leaves.

Officials revised the death toll downward from 51 to 24 on Tuesday after the state medical examiner said some victims may have been double-counted in the confusion immediately after the storm. More than 200 people were treated at area hospitals.

Search-and-rescue teams focused their efforts at Plaza Towers Elementary School, where the storm ripped off the roof, knocked down walls and destroyed the playground as students and teachers huddled in hallways and bathrooms.

Seven of the dead children were killed at the school, but others were pulled alive from under a collapsed wall and other heaps of mangled debris. Rescue workers passed the survivors down a human chain of parents and volunteers.

Plaza Towers and another school in Oklahoma City that was not as severely damaged did not have reinforced storm shelters, or safe rooms.

President Barack Obama pledged to provide federal help and mourned the death of young children who were killed while “trying to take shelter in the safest place they knew – their school.”

Survivors emerged with harrowing accounts of the storm’s wrath, which many endured as they shielded loved ones.

Chelsie McCumber grabbed her two-year-old son Ethan wrapped him in jackets and covered him with a mattress before they squeezed into a coat closet at their house. She sang to her son when he complained it was getting hot inside the small space.

“Time just kind of stood still” in the closet, she recalled. “I was kind of holding my breath thinking this isn’t the worst of it. I didn’t think that was it. I kept waiting for it to get worse. When I got out, it was worse than I thought.”

Oklahoma governor Mary Fallin lamented the loss of life, especially of the nine children, but she praised the town’s resilience.

“We will rebuild, and we will regain our strength,” she said.