Parents huddle waiting for news of lost children as rescuers comb tornado smashed Oklahoma City A child is pulled from beneath a collapsed wall at the Plaza Towers Elementary School. Picture: Sue Ogrocki Source: AP PARENTS huddled together throughout the night for news of missing children after a monster tornado ripped through schools in Oklahoma city yesterday. The storm left scores of blocks barren and dark in Moore, a community of 41,000 people 16km south of Oklahoma City's heart. Rescuers walked through neighborhoods where Monday's (US time) powerful twister flattened home after home, to listen for any voices calling out from the rubble. A helicopter buzzed above, shining lights on crews below. As Monday turned into Tuesday in Oklahoma, the suburb of Moore braced for another long, harrowing day. "As long as we are here ... we are going to hold out hope that we will find survivors," said Trooper Betsy Randolph, a spokeswoman for the Oklahoma Highway Patrol. Families anxiously waited at nearby churches to hear if their loved ones were okay. A man with a megaphone stood Monday evening near St. Andrews United Methodist Church and called out the names of surviving children. While some parents and children hugged each other as they reunited, others were left to wait, fearing the worst as the night dragged on. People react in front of the Plaza Towers Elementary school in Moore following the deadly tornado. Picture: The Oklahoman, Sarah Phipps Crews continued their desperate search-and-rescue effort throughout the night at Plaza Towers Elementary, where the storm had ripped off the school's roof, knocked down walls and turned the playground into a mass of twisted plastic and metal as students and teachers huddled in hallways and bathrooms. Children from the school were among the dead, but several students were pulled out 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 arms to a triage center in the parking lot. Some students looked dazed, others terrified. James Rushing, who lives across the street from the school, heard reports of the approaching twister and ran to the school where his 5-year-old foster son, Aiden, attends classes. As dusk fell, heavy equipment rolled up to the school, and emergency workers wearing yellow crawled among the ruins, searching for survivors. Crews used jackhammers and sledgehammers to tear away concrete, and chunks were being thrown to the side as the workers dug. Photo: AP/The Oklahoman, Paul Hellstern Another school, Briarwood Elementary, was also damaged by the tornado, but not as extensively as Plaza Towers. US President Barack Obama declared a "major disaster" as rescuers combed through the smashed homes and the collapsed remains of the primary schools. Stunned weather forecasters reported a 3km wide swath of vicious winds, and news helicopters tracked a dark funnel ploughing through densely packed suburbs near the capital of the state of Oklahoma. "We've had a massive tornado, a huge one that has passed through this community," Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin told a news conference shortly after the mid-afternoon storm, which struck near the end of the school day. We know there are a lot of injuries. We know we've lost a tremendous amount of structures throughout this community and throughout the state," she said, as the Moore police chief urged people to leave the area. The dead included at least 20 children, most of them under the age of 12, according to Amy Elliott of the state medical examiner's office. This aerial photo shows the remains of homes hit by a massive tornado in Moore, Oklahoma. Picture: Steve Gooch She later said she could not confirm a rise from an earlier official toll of 51 but that she had been told to prepare for 40 more bodies. CNN reported that at least 145 people had been hospitalised. The tornado also destroyed the community hospital and some retail stores. Moore Mayor Glenn Lewis watched it pass through from his jewelry shop. "All of my employees were in the vault," Lewis said. Oklahoma tornados: a child is pulled from the rubble of the Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore, Oklahoma. From its news helicopter, KFOR's cameras captured scenes of widespread destruction, with street after street of single-storey homes in Moore stripped of their roofs and cars piled atop each other like toys. Utility lines were down and gas lines exposed, triggering localised fires. The Moore Medical Center was evacuated after it sustained damage, and state authorities called out the National Guard to help rescue efforts. Obama ordered federal aid to supplement local recovery efforts. On Twitter, the National Weather Service gave the tornado a preliminary rating of EF-4, indicating that it packed winds of 267km to 322 km per hour - more severe than a category five hurricane. In downtown Oklahoma City, tornado sirens went off at least three times and the Interstate 35 highway - a busy north-south artery through the US heartland - was closed to all but emergency vehicles. In Moore, live images from KFOR showed people wandering among the debris and even a couple of untethered horses from a local stable that somehow managed to survive the punishing storm. "I had no idea it was coming," said a stable worker, who told how he survived the "unbearably loud" twister by taking cover in one of the stalls. The tornado followed roughly the same track as a May 1999 twister that killed 44 people, injured hundreds more and destroyed thousands of homes. Tornadoes frequently touch down on Oklahoma's wide open plains, but Monday's twister struck a populated urban area and raised fears of a high casualty toll. Because of the hard ground, few homes are built with basements or storm shelters in which residents can take cover. Oklahoma City lies inside the so-called "Tornado Alley" stretching from South Dakota to central Texas, an area particularly vulnerable to tornadoes. But Moore's residents were shocked at the sprawling moon-like landscape left behind by the massive twister. "There's nothing left of my house," an unidentified woman told CNN. The front is still standing but the back is gone. My bathroom honestly is untouched. We've lost animals. We've lost everything," she said. Some 35,000 people remained without power early on Tuesday, according to OG&E, the local utility. On Sunday, a powerful storm system churning through the US Midwest spawned tornadoes in Iowa, Kansas and Oklahoma, destroying homes and killing at least two people, US media reported.