BURIED IN RUBBLE: Children trapped after killer tornado touches down in Oklahoma

A NEW, massive toado has touched down near Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, wiping out entire neighbourhoods, crushing schools and causing pile-ups on highways as residents scrambled for safety.

At least six people are dead after the Oklahoma City toado, CNN reports.

Four people were killed after a toado flattened a 7-11 near Fourth St and Telephone Rd in Moore, including a mother and her baby, KFOR reports. They were apparently trying to shelter in a freezer inside the store.

There are also reports that several children have been pulled out of rubble alive at a primary school.

An Associated Press photographer saw several children being pulled out of what was left of the Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore, Oklahoma, after a massive 1.6km-wide toado hit the region.

Oklahoma toados: a child is pulled from the rubble of the Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore, Oklahoma, and passed along to rescuers after a toado as much as 1.6km wide with winds up to 320 kph roared through the Oklahoma City suburbs, flattening entire neighborhoods, setting buildings on fire and landing a direct blow on an elementary school. Photo: AP/Sue Ogrocki

Rescue workers lifted children from the rubble before they were passed down a human chain and taken to a triage center set up in the school's parking lot.

The school is southwest of Oklahoma City. Its roof appears mangled and the walls had fallen in or had collapsed.

A total of 75 kindergarten, first and second graders and staff  were reportedly inside the school when the toado hit. Fox News reports emergency crew have now tued their attention to retrieving the bodies of at least 24 pupils. Grades 4, 5 and 6 pupils were moved to a church before the toado hit and are all accounted for.

News9 Oklahoma reports the toado also hit a Briarwood Elementary School in Moore, and children may be trapped inside, and that one whole neighbourhood has already been wiped out.

The toado touched down around 2.42pm local time.

The National Weather Service said the toado's preliminary classification was an EF-4, with winds up to 320 km/h.

Oklahoma toados: a series of devastating toados have hit Oklahoma. The storms leveled Plaza Towers Elementary School and Briarwood Elementary School in Oklahoma City. Photo: KWIN Oklahoma/Twitter

KFOR reported the twister looked to have touched down in Newcastle, south of Oklahoma City, before heading toward a casino where people were sheltering.

The toado was creating a huge funnel cloud, kicking up dust and debris 1.6 kilometres-wide.

The twister struck after the US National Weather Service issued a rare toado waing for the parts of the city, and news footage showed a twister touching down nearby, wiping whole neighbourhoods off the map.

Moore, an Oklahoma City suburb, is reportedly worst hit and all but wiped out, with emergency crews racing to the scene to help find survivors. There were no immediate reports of injuries.

Power lines have been downed, and cars are piled up on the highways, local reports said.

News footage by the News9 chopper showed entire streets wiped out with houses completely destroyed and trees levelled and schools demolished, with fires breaking out and sirens wailing.

Oklahoma toados: a woman is pulled out from under toado debris at the Plaza Towers School after a toado as much as 1.6km wide with winds up to 320 kph roared through the Oklahoma City suburbs, flattening entire neighborhoods, setting buildings on fire and landing a direct blow on an elementary school. Photo: AP/Sue Ogrocki

Footage also showed vehicles littering roadways south and southwest of Oklahoma City.

More than 171,000 people could be in the path of the storm, CNN reports.

The US National Weather Service said Oklahoma and Missouri face the biggest threat, but strong winds, hail and bad storms could be felt far north in Minnesota and Wisconsin, it waed.

In advance of the storm, the Oklahoma House of Representatives stopped work so Capitol employees could take shelter in the basement.

Television and radio broadcasters urged residents to take shelter because of the storm's strength and size.

"We're just waiting to see what happens. It's a mile-wide toado. It's still grinding out," said Mark Meyers, a spokesman for the Oklahoma County Sheriff's Office.

The remains of Plaza Towers Elementary school in Moore after a toado hit. Picture: Twitter/@SafeensSS

"We are currently on standby for toado response. Whatever happens, we'll be ready to respond."

The strongest winds on earth - 302 mp/h (486kp/h) - were recorded near Moore during a toado May 3, 1999.

The latest toado comes as residents were struggling to recover after earlier storms killed two and left at least 39 people injured.

Several toadoes struck parts of the US's midsection on Sunday, concentrating damage in central Oklahoma and Wichita, Kansas.

Two people were killed near Shawnee, Oklahoma, and at least 39 people throughout the state were injured, according to the state's emergency management director Albert Ashwood.

The National Weather Service was forecasting more of the same for the area - including Oklahoma City and Tulsa - oveight, waing of the possibility of toadoes and baseball-sized hail.

Map of More area. A is Briarwood Elementary School and B is Plaza Towers Elementary School.

When Lindsay Carter heard on the radio that a violent storm was approaching her rural Oklahoma neighbourhood, she gathered her belongings and fled. When she retued, there was little left.

Oklahoma Goveor Mary Fallin began touring the hardest-hit areas early Monday, including Caey, in Lincoln County, and a mobile home park near Shawnee, 356 kilometres southeast of Oklahoma City, that suffered a direct hit and was where the two confirmed deaths happened.

"It took a dead hit," resident James Hoke said of the Steelman Estates Mobile Home Park. Emerging from a storm cellar where he sought refuge with his wife and two children, Mr Hoke found that their mobile home had vanished.

"Everything is gone," he said.

Mr Hoke said he started trying to help neighbours and found his wife's father covered in rubble.

"My father-in-law was buried under the house. We had to pull Sheetrock off of him," Mr Hoke said.

Oklahoma toados: a woman carries an injured child to a triage center near the Plaza Towers School after a toado as much as 1.6km wide with winds up to 320 kph roared through the Oklahoma City suburbs, flattening entire neighborhoods, setting buildings on fire and landing a direct blow on an elementary school. Photo: AP/Sue Ogrocki

Forecasters had been waing of bad weather since Wednesday and on Sunday said conditions had ripened for powerful toadoes.

Wall-to-wall broadcasts of storm information spread the word Sunday, leaving Pottawatomie County Sheriff Mike Booth grateful.

"There was a possibility a lot more people could have been injured," Mr Booth said.

"This is the worst I've seen in Pottawatomie County in my 25 years of law enforcement."

Ms Carter heard on the radio that a storm that originated southwest of Oklahoma City was headed toward Shawnee.

"We got in the truck and left," Ms Carter said.

Oklahoma toados: A woman carries her child through a field near the collapsed Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore, Oklahoma after a toado as much as 1.6km wide with winds up to 320 kph roared through the Oklahoma City suburbs, landing a direct blow on an elementary school. Photo: AP/ Sue Ogrocki

With upward of 30 minutes' notice for Pottawatomie County, Ms Carter had time to leave one of the few frame homes in Steelman Estates - and most of her house was intact when she retued.

"I walked up, and the house was OK. Part of the roof was gone," she said.

The scene was different a short distance away.

"Trees were all gone. I walked further down and all those houses were gone," she said.

Mr Booth said a 79-year-old man, who was later identified as Glen Irish, was found dead out in the open at Steelman Estates.

The state medical examiner's office said Monday that a 76-year-old man, Billy Hutchinson, also died, although it didn't say whether he was found dead or died at a hospital.

The office said both men lived in Shawnee, but the city wasn't hit by the toado and it wasn't immediately clear if either or both lived in the mobile home park, which is near the city.

"You can see where there's absolutely nothing, then there are places where you have mobile home frames on top of each other, debris piled up," Mr Booth said.

"It looks like there's been heavy equipment in there on a demolition tour.

"It's pretty bad. It's pretty much wiped out," he said.

Toadoes were reported Sunday in Iowa, Kansas and Oklahoma as part of a storm system that stretched from Texas to Minnesota.

Emergency officials traversed the neighbourhoods struck in Oklahoma in an effort to account for everyone.

Keli Cain, a spokeswoman for the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management, said that, many times in such situations, people who are not found immediately are discovered later to have left the area ahead of the storm.

A storm spotter told the National Weather Service that the toado left the earth "scoured" at the mobile home park.

At the nearby intersection of Interstate 40 and US 177, a half-dozen tractor-trailers were blown over, closing both highways for a time.

"It seemed like it went on forever. It was a big rumbling for a long time," said Shawn Savory, standing outside his damaged remodeling business in Shawnee.

"It was close enough that you could feel like you could reach out and touch it."

Ms Fallin declared an emergency for 16 Oklahoma counties because of the severe storms and flooding.

The massive toado tore apart neighbourhoods, schools and caused pile-ups on the highway. Picture: News9

The declaration lets local govements acquire goods quickly to respond to their residents' needs and puts the state in line for federal help if it becomes necessary.

Heavy rains and straight-line winds hit much of weste Oklahoma on Saturday.

Toadoes were also reported Sunday at Edmond, Arcadia and near Wellston to the north and northeast of Oklahoma City.

The supercell that generated the twisters weakened as it approached Tulsa, 145 kilometres to the northeast.

"I knew it was coming," said Randy Grau, who huddled with his wife and two young sons in the safe room at their Edmond home when the toado hit.

He said he peered out his window as the weather worsened and believed he saw a flock of birds heading down the street.

Twitter user Danielle Dozier posted this picture of the latest toado touching down in Newcastle, Oklahoma. Picture: Twitter

"Then I realised it was swirling debris. That's when we shut the door of the safe room," said Mr Grau, adding that they remained in the room for 10 minutes.

In Wichita, Kansas, a toado touched down near Mid-Continent Airport on the city's southwest side shortly before 4pm, knocking out power to thousands of homes and businesses but bypassing the most populated areas of Kansas' biggest city.

The Wichita toado was an EF1 - the strength of toado on the enhanced Fujita scale - with winds of 110 mp/h (178 kp/h), according to the weather service.

Golf ball-sized hail slammed homes in the area. Jim Raulston, of Wichita, said the ferocious winds slammed the hailstones into his home.

"It was just unbelievable how the hail and everything was just coming straight sideways," Mr Raulston said.

Sedgwick County Emergency Management Director Randy Duncan said there were no reports of fatalities or injuries in Kansas.

The weather service reported two toadoes touched down in Iowa - near Huxley and Earlham. Damage included the loss of some cattle when the storm blew over a ba on a farm in Mitchell County.

Some 6000 customers were without power Monday, including in the hardest-hit areas where the toado sirens were also rendered silent. In the event of new impending strikes, first responders planned to use their emergency vehicles' sirens to wa residents.

In Oklahoma, aerial television news footage showed homes with significant damage northeast of Oklahoma City.

Some outbuildings appeared to have been leveled, and some homes' roofs or walls had been knocked down.

In Katie Leathers' backyard in Edmond, the family's trampoline was tossed through a section of fence and a giant tree uprooted.

"I saw all the trees waving, and that's when I grabbed everyone and got into two closets," Ms Leathers said.