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Six months after volunteers poured into <a href="/topics//Long_Island,_NY">Long Island</a> to help with superstorm Sandy recovery, Craig Cooper, between flights at the Baltimore/Washington International Airport, said, "I'm so proud" to be able to carry forward their caring efforts. This time the need is near <a href="/topics//Oklahoma_City,_OK">Oklahoma City</a> where at least 24 lives were lost Monday in the wake of a massive tornado.
"Now the shoe is on the other foot," said Cooper, a volunteer with the <a href="/topics//American_Red_Cross">American Red Cross</a> on <a href="/topics//Long_Island,_NY">Long Island</a> who'll serve as a spokesman for that organization's activities. Already, he said, six shelters were open in the area and 25 emergency response vehicles have been sent to the scene.
Cooper, 59, of <a href="/topics//Smithtown,_NY">Smithtown</a>, was en route to Kansas City, where he said he would be updated with information as to his ultimate destination in the tornado-hit region. 
Having seen "the brutality of tornadoes" on other occasions, he said he's expecting a "very unsettling" scene, likely one in which "homes are completely leveled, vacuumed off their foundations."
A freelance video and event producer, Cooper said he started volunteering after seeing images of the devastation wreaked by <a href="/topics//Hurricane_Katrina">Hurricane Katrina</a>. At that time, he said, he thought "I can't just sit here and do nothing. I have to do something."
Also en route to the area Tuesday -- and calling in from Long Island MacArthur Airport -- was Joan Broderick, 61, an associate professor of psychology at <a href="/topics//Stony_Brook_University">Stony Brook University</a> and a Red Cross volunteer since 1995.
In her role as disaster mental health manager, she and her team will likely help in assessing people's immediate needs for, say, water or finding their families; listen to their stories; and remind them that "people are strong and resilient" and that they can "plug into the coping strategies used in the past," said Broderick, of <a href="/topics//Westhampton,_NY">Westhampton</a>.
She also said her team likely will be providing support to other disaster volunteers, especially in this community where so many children lost their lives.

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Helmeted rescue workers raced Tuesday to complete the search for survivors and the dead in the <a href="/topics//Oklahoma_City,_OK">Oklahoma City</a> suburb where a mammoth tornado destroyed countless homes, cleared lots down to bare red <a href="/topics//Earth_(musician)">earth</a> and claimed 24 lives, including those of nine children. 
 Scientists concluded the storm was a rare and extraordinarily powerful type of twister known as an EF5, ranking it at the top of the scale used to measure tornado strength. Those twisters are capable of lifting reinforced buildings off the ground, hurling cars like missiles and stripping trees completely free of bark. 
 Residents of Moore began returning to their homes a day after the tornado smashed some neighborhoods into jagged wood scraps and gnarled pieces of metal. In place of their houses, many families found only empty lots. 
 After nearly 24 hours of searching, the fire chief said he was confident there were no more bodies or survivors in the rubble. 
 "I'm 98 percent sure we're good," Gary Bird said at a news conference with the governor, who had just completed an aerial tour of the disaster zone. 
 Authorities were so focused on the search effort that they had yet to establish the full scope of damage along the storm's long, ruinous path. 
 They did not know how many homes were gone or how many families had been displaced. Emergency crews had trouble navigating devastated neighborhoods because there were no street signs left. Some rescuers used smartphones or <a href="/topics//Global_Positioning_Systems">GPS</a> devices to guide them through areas with no recognizable landmarks. 
 The death toll was revised downward from 51 after the state medical examiner said some victims may have been counted twice in the confusion. More than 200 people were treated at area hospitals. 
 By Tuesday afternoon, every damaged home had been searched at least once, Bird said. His goal was to conduct three searches of each building just to be certain there were no more bodies or survivors. 
 The fire chief was hopeful that could be completed before nightfall, but the work was being hampered by heavy rain. Crews also continued a brick-by-brick search of the rubble of a school that was blown apart with many children inside. 
 No additional survivors or bodies have been found since Monday night, Bird said. 
 Survivors emerged with harrowing accounts of the storm's wrath, which many endured as they shielded loved ones. 
 Chelsie McCumber grabbed her 2-year-old son, Ethan, wrapped him in jackets and covered him with a mattress before they squeezed into a coat closet of their house. McCumber sang to her child when he complained it was getting hot inside the small space. 
 "I told him we're going to play tent in the closet," she said, beginning to cry. 
 "I just felt air so I knew the roof was gone," she said Tuesday, standing under the sky where her roof should have been. The home was littered with wet gray insulation and all of their belongings. 
 "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," she said. 
 Gov. <a href="/topics//Mary_Fallin">Mary Fallin</a> lamented the loss of life, especially the children who were killed, but she celebrated the town's resilience. 
 "We will rebuild, and we will regain our strength," Fallin said. 
 In describing the bird's-eye view of the damage, the governor said many houses were "taken away," leaving "just sticks and bricks, basically. It's hard to tell if there was a structure there or not." 
 From the air, large stretches of town 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, limbs and bark. 
 In revising its estimate of the storm's power, the <a href="/topics//National_Weather_Service">National Weather Service</a> said the tornado had winds of at least 200 mph and was on the ground for 40 minutes. 
 The agency upgraded the tornado from an EF4 on the enhanced Fujita scale based on reports from a damage-assessment team, said spokeswoman Keli Pirtle. Monday's twister was at least a half-mile wide. It was the nation's first EF5 tornado of 2013. 
 Other search-and-rescue teams concentrated on Plaza Towers Elementary, 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 nine dead children were killed at the school, but several students 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 neighborhood volunteers. Parents carried children in their <a href="/topics//ARMS_(band)">arms</a> to a triage center in the parking lot. Some students looked dazed, others terrified. 
 Neither Plaza Towers nor another school in Oklahoma City that was not as severely damaged had reinforced storm shelters, or safe rooms, said Albert Ashwood is director of the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management. 
 More than 100 schools across the state do have safe rooms, he said, explaining that it's up to each jurisdiction to set spending priorities. 
 Ashwood said a shelter would not necessarily have saved more lives at Plaza Towers. 
 "When you talk about any kind of safety measures ... it's a mitigating measure, it's not an absolute," he told reporters. "There's not a guarantee that everyone will be totally safe." 
 Officials were still trying to account for a handful of children not found at the school who may have gone home early with their parents, Bird said. 
 On the streets of Moore, evidence of the storm's fury stretched in every direction: Roofs were torn off houses, exposing metal rods left twisted like pretzels. Cars sat in heaps, crumpled and sprayed with caked-on mud. Insulation and siding was piled up against any walls still standing. Yards were littered with pieces of wood, nails and pieces of electric poles. 
 <a href="/topics//Barack_Obama">President Barack Obama</a> 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." 
 The town of Moore "needs to get everything it needs right away," he said Tuesday. 
 Moore has been one of the fastest-growing suburbs of Oklahoma City, attracting middle-income families and young couples looking for stable schools and affordable housing. The town's population has grown over the last decade as developers built subdivisions for people who wanted to avoid the urban problems and schools of Oklahoma City but couldn't afford pricier Norman, the college town next door. 
 Many residents commute to jobs in Oklahoma City or to Tinker Air Force Base, about 20 minutes away.

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Oklahoma tornado emergency crews look for survivors; death toll now at 24

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News of the deadly Oklahoma tornado literally hit close to home for <a href="/topics//New_York_Mets">Mets</a> pitcher Jeremy Hefner, who was watching television coverage of the devastating twister in the clubhouse before Monday night's game. 
 "I have an uncle that lives in Moore and cousins that live in Moore," Hefner said of the <a href="/topics//Oklahoma_City,_OK">Oklahoma City</a> suburb where the storm's 190-mile per hour winds did most of their damage. "So when I heard that it was in Moore again, I was freaking out." 
 He received assurance that all his family members and friends were OK. But he was rattled to learn his former elementary school was one of the buildings leveled. Hefner was born and went to high school in Perkins, Okla., north of <a href="/topics//Oklahoma_City,_OK">Oklahoma City</a>, but lived for 10 years in Moore. His grandmother, he said, still lives on the south side of <a href="/topics//Oklahoma_City,_OK">Oklahoma City</a>, which abuts Moore. 
 He said he was praying for the dead and injured, with special thoughts to the children. "Gut-wrenching, unfathomable," he said. 
 "It seems like every year, dinner time, you see the clouds rolling in and you know there might be a tornado. There's a certain sense of looking out the window and actually seeing it coming. It's part of the culture and you get used to it. You know what to do; you seek shelter underground." 
 And he has no plans of uprooting his offseason home in <a href="/topics//Tulsa,_OK">Tulsa</a>. "Once you've lived there and you're part of the community and the atmosphere of Oklahoma, you don't want to leave. I come here during the season to play and love my time in New York," he said, "but that's where my home is. That's where my heart is." 
 Durant, OKC: $1M each The <a href="/topics//Oklahoma_City_Thunder">Oklahoma City Thunder</a> is giving $1 million for tornado relief, matching a $1-million pledge by star player <a href="/topics//Kevin_Durant">Kevin Durant</a>.

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