As rescue efforts in Oklahoma wound down today, residents turned to the daunting task of rebuilding a US heartland community shattered by a vast tornado that killed at least 24 people.
Officials said most bodies had been recovered from the sprawling moonscape that was once an Oklahoma City suburb, where the tornado steamrolled entire neighborhoods and two schools. Nine children were among those killed.
After wide fluctuations in the casualty estimates offered by officials, Oklahoma City police chief Bill Citty told a news conference yesterday that 20 people had been killed in the suburb of Moore and four more elsewhere.
"All of the people that have been reported missing -- initially last night, about 48 -- all of those have been actually found except for, I think, a few left in Moore," Citty said, adding that the death toll could yet rise.
More than 100 people have been pulled out alive from under debris, said Terri Watkins of the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management, and officials said more than 200 were injured in the hurricane-strength storm.
"It's unreal. It's so visceral," said 32-year-old accountant Roger Graham as he combed through the ruins of the three-bedroom home he shared with his wife Kalissa, a schoolteacher, recovering what he could.
Curtis Carver, a 20-year veteran of the US Marine Corps who served two years in Iraq, described his hometown as a "war zone" as he waited at a police checkpoint for permission to recover keepsakes from the ruins of his house.
"It was my home, my kids' home," said the 38-year-old father of two, both of whom escaped harm. Carver was not allowed past because his house was in an area still deemed too dangerous.
"Now it's gone. There's nothing left. It's a pile of sticks.... And they're keeping me away," he said.
The tornado was the strongest possible category, EF5, packing winds of more than 320 kilometers per hour, Kelly Pirtle of the US weather agency's Severe Storms Laboratory in nearby Norman told AFP.
The epic twister, three kilometers across, flattened block after block of homes as it struck mid-afternoon Monday, hurling cars through the air, downing power lines and setting off localized fires in a 45-minute rampage.
As of yesterday nearly 20,000 people remained without power.
