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Tornado horror

May 25th, 2013 cnn No comments

(CNN) — It was like any other day. If anything, it might have been a little better than usual — with more deserved honors for the kids, more jokes and songs, more smiles. Even Mother Nature, after storms the previous day, seemed at first to cooperate as the sun shone brightly.

But things changed quickly.

And in Oklahoma, where adults and children alike habitually practice what to do if a tornado strikes, change can prove deadly.

Things are different, more heartbreaking now for students and staff at Plaza Towers and Briarwood elementary schools in Moore, both of them leveled by a tornado.

“A lot of pain, a lot of tears, very little food and very little sleep is the way you get through it,” Plaza Towers principal Amy Simpson said Friday.

The memories linger. They are not just of the horrible moments when the twister tore through their schools, but the minutes before as teachers did what they could to keep their students safe and in control as it approached, the short time before that as frenzied parents rushed in looking for their sons and daughters, and the hours before that when everything seemed perfect.

“What started off as a normal day at Plaza Towers tuned into a horrible, horrible thing for seven families,” said Simpson, referring to the seven of her students killed by the storm.

Principal: Teachers saved students

Exclusive: Classroom’s tornado encounter

Principal: ‘The evening was a nightmare’

Principal, teachers reunite amid rubble

A frenzied, yet controlled few horrific minutes

Each school week at Plaza Towers starts with “Rise and Shine.” It’s a chance for students to see their teachers and counselors, to sing and recite the school creed, and to honor youngsters’ accomplishments inside and outside school.

“During that morning meeting, we celebrate kids,” the school’s principal said.

On Monday, the celebrations didn’t end there. Simpson recalled then heading to an hour-long award ceremony for first and second graders to toast their many achievements, then to a practice for sixth-graders’ commencement exercises.

After that, kids started filing into the cafeteria for the first of six lunch sessions the school has.

“Everything in the morning went exactly as it has for the last 170 days,” Simpson recalled.

It was after lunch that teachers first got word to be on alert for severe weather.

Still, at that point, no one knew a twister was heading their way. Simpson continued to go about her business, interviewing a candidate for a pre-kindergarten position, when she noticed heavy thunderstorms roll through.

Simpson ended the interview and noticed parents starting to stream in to pick up their kids. This happens often when it rains heavily, but the principal sensed something abnormal was up as parents rushed in faster and in greater numbers than usual.

“At that point, I made a decision that you didn’t have to check out your child the formal way,” Simpson recalled, saying she stood out front to see who was coming and going.

Some parents were noticeably scared. One father, Simpson said, was “in a panic.” She told him that he had to calm down — so as not to alarm any students — before he went through the hallways to retrieve his child.

This steady stream lasted 5 or 6 minutes before the sirens went off, indicating a tornado on the ground. Simpson got on the intercom and told everyone to do what they’d practiced in all those drills. Then she walked up and down the hallways. (She couldn’t get to where her second and third-graders were, however, as they were in a different building.)

Some teachers tracked the twister on mobile devices, until Simpson asked them to turn them off. She did another walk-through and saw her staffers rubbing the backs of their students, some of whom — with their heads down and hands over their heads — sang.

When the principal got back to the front of the school, the tornado was nearly on top of them. She got on the intercom one more time.

“It’s here.”

Rising from the rubble

Simpson huddled in a bathroom with four other women. “The only time I yelled (I said), ‘In God’s name, go away, go away.’ I said it about four times.”

Debris was still flying when Simpson pushed out the door, stepped over a sink, and noticed “the whole neighborhood was gone.”

Somehow, her phone rang. It was her mother, and she told her to call 911.

There were no more walls left in her school. The bumper of a car sat between the pre-kindergarten and kindergarten students.

“I could see the kids peeking around what used to be a corner,” Simpson said.

Justin Ayres, a fifth-grade teacher who was the first to spot the twister, was the first one out on one side of what had been the school. Men and women, meanwhile, were running foward to help.

Within minutes, Simpson recalled, the pre-K, kindergarten and first graders were safely out. Her husband soon arrived and put his hand on her shoulder.

“I said, ‘Go help second and third grade,’” referring to those students who were in a different, nearby building. “I haven’t seen any of them yet.”

More and more students emerged, some of them heading to a nearby church. But what had been the second- and third-grade building was precarious, at best.

“I made my way around there, then I begged and pleaded for the human chain to get me up there,” Simpson said. “They did. And they were pulling out students and teachers.”

All seven killed at Plaza Towers died in that rubble.

“The rest of the evening was a nightmare.”

‘They grew up really fast’

Briarwood Elementary Principal Shelley Jaques-McMillin’s first impression of Monday?

“I remember thinking, “Yeah, it’s sunny! So we’re going to be able to go outside.”

School started, as it always does, with what’s called the Grizzly Growl — a time for singing, dancing, celebrating.

“(I remember) the happy faces, how excited they were, just seeing them smile,” said Jaques-McMillin. And there was laughter when a special guest — a sheep — made a special appearance. Staffers had to give it a kiss, because a group of students had reached their reading goal.

Lunchtime that day was especially fun.

“This is what school is about,” Jaques-McMillin remembered saying at the time. “This is why we do what we do. They’re so happy.”

The next few hours went by in a blur — in some ways, much like at Plaza Towers. There were the students and staff doing what they’d practiced in tornado drills — the sirens, and more.

Jaques-McMillin felt stronger, more resolute this time than when the last EF5 tornado — the strongest such classification — came through Moore. When that happened, she was alone and horrified.

This time was different. She had a sense of purpose, beyond simply making sure they survived.

“I have 675 students that I promise their parents every single day, I will protect your kids,” Jaques-McMillin said. “I’ll feed them, they’ll be safe, and I’ll give them back at the end of the day.”

Briarwood Elementary didn’t survive the tornado, but everyone who had been inside did.

They included 4-year-olds and students set to move onto seventh grade, though they were still kids at heart.

Yet on Monday, one of them reached down to a teacher, who was trapped in the rubble with water from a busted pipe blowing in her face.

“He grabbed her hand and said, ‘Calm down, I’m going to dig you out.”

And he did, just a few days after letting loose during a “Glow in the Dark” party.

“Here they were, being silly on Friday night, … dancing, being sixth-graders,” Jaques-McMillin said. “They grew up really fast.”

Article source: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/25/us/oklahoma-tornado-school-day/index.html?eref=edition

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UK terror arrest

May 25th, 2013 cnn No comments

London (CNN) — Concern grew Saturday that the slaying of a British soldier by attackers who claimed they were acting to avenge the deaths of Muslims overseas has prompted a swell in anti-Muslim sentiment in Britain.

A group which monitors incidents of anti-Muslim abuse said Saturday morning it had seen a huge increase in the number of reported incidents in the past 48 hours.

Meanwhile Northumbria Police said its officers had arrested three people in northern England on suspicion of posting racist tweets Saturday, ahead of a planned protest march in Newcastle by the far-right English Defence League.

Another group, Newcastle Unites, will stage a counter demonstration at the same time.

“The policing operation will allow people the right to peaceful protest, protect the safety of everyone in the city and prevent serious disorder and damage,” a police statement said.

Members of the EDL clashed with police near the scene of the killing late Wednesday. A tweet from its official account proclaimed then that “it’s fair to say that finally the country is waking up!:-) NO SURRENDER!”

Politicians and community leaders have been trying to damp down tensions in the wake of the murder of the soldier, Drummer Lee Rigby, while police numbers have been boosted in vulnerable areas.

But despite those efforts, reports of anti-Muslim abuse have soared according to figures gathered by the Tell Mama project, which describes itself as “a public service for measuring and monitoring anti-Muslim attacks.”

Fiyaz Mughal, a coordinator of Tell Mama, told CNN Saturday morning that 162 incidents had been reported in the past 48 hours — compared with four to six incidents a day on average before the Woolwich attack.

The latest include street-based incidents like name calling, assaults and materials being thrown at individuals, Mughal said, as well as online incidents, where targeted hate is directed at individuals through the Internet and social media. Eight incidents of attacks against mosques across Britain are also included in the figure.

Mughal, also director of an interfaith national hate crime reporting project, Faith Matters, said he had observed that people are scared, particularly female Muslims who wear headscarves and have told Tell Mama that they are afraid to go out. “It’s quite endemic,” he said.

Tell Mama recorded 632 incidents of anti-Muslim abuse in the year from March 2012, it said, about three-quarters of which occurred online. More than half were directed at women.

Imams sign letter condemning attack

The apparent increase in abuse comes as Muslim leaders, as well as their Christian counterparts, seek to keep communities calm.

Shaykh Shams Adduha, founder and director of Ebrahim College, which teaches Islamic studies in London, is one of nearly 100 imams and Muslim groups to have signed a letter Friday condemning the “outrageous attack” on Rigby and offering their condolences to his family.

“We share the absolute horror felt by the rest of British society at the sick and barbaric crime that was committed in the name of our religion. We condemn this heinous atrocity in the strongest possible terms. It is a senseless act of pure depravity worthy of nothing but contempt,” it read.

Shams Adduha told CNN Saturday that the Muslim community had reacted promptly and was working hard to defuse tensions.

“First of all we’ve been very open in our condemnation and very open about the fact that there is no place … in Islam for this kind of act,” the imam said.

“At the same time we’ve been calling for calm, we’ve constantly been talking to our communities to make sure that their fears are allayed. But of course the reactions are happening — and they will happen.”

These types of attacks are also a reaction, he said, to problems and grievances among “angry young people out there in the world.”

With regards to the Woolwich attack, he said, Muslim leaders must make clear that what happened is “un-Islamic” and seek to educate young people so they are not susceptible to “fringe voices.”

Prime Minister David Cameron stressed Thursday that “the fault lies solely with sickening individuals who carried out this attack,” adding that “nothing in Islam … justifies this truly dreadful act.

Friends, acquaintances and British media identified 28-year-old Michael Adebolajo, a British national of Nigerian descent, as the suspect seen in a gory video from the scene of the Woolwich killing. He is said to be a Muslim convert.

He apparently approached a man filming the gory scene in the Woolwich neighborhood and suggested that Rigby had been targeted only “because Muslims are dying daily” at the hands of British troops like him.

“We must fight them as they fight us. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” he said in the video aired by CNN affiliate ITN.

Britain’s armed forces have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. All its combat troops are due to leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014.

The identity of a second man, aged 22, seized at the scene by armed police has not been released. Both suspects were shot and remain in hospital.

A third man, aged 29, who was arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to murder on Thursday is also still in custody.

Terror arrest after TV interview

British counter-terrorism police arrested a man who said he was a friend of Woolwich suspect Adebolajo after he gave an interview to the BBC Friday night, the British broadcaster said.

The man, Abu Nusaybah, was arrested on suspected terrorism offenses after telling on air how his friend had been approached by Britain’s domestic intelligence service, known as MI5, according to the broadcaster.

A BBC staffer, who did want to be named, told CNN that police were inside BBC Broadcasting House in central London waiting for the interview to conclude before they made the arrest.

In the interview with BBC’s “Newsnight” show, Nusaybah said MI5 had approached Adebolajo in the past year, asking if he wanted to work for them.

Adebolajo rejected the approach, according to his friend.

Abu Nusaybah said the contact from MI5 occurred last year after Adebolajo returned from a visit to Kenya during which he was detained by security forces.

Adebolajo told his friend that he was physically assaulted and sexually threatened during his detention.

CNN is working to independently verify the claims made by Abu Nusaybah about his friend’s treatment in detention.

Abu Nusaybah went on to say that Adebolajo appeared changed and withdrawn after his return from Kenya.

The pair first met in 2002, he said. Abu Nusaybah had converted to Islam in late 2004 and Adebolajo followed suit about four months later, he said.

A security source told CNN that “we would never comment” on the kind of allegations made in the interview.

London’s Metropolitan Police Service said a 31-year-old man had been arrested in London Friday night on terrorism-related offenses, but following standard practice would not give the arrested man’s name.

A Scotland Yard spokesman told CNN the arrest was not connected to the investigation in Woolwich into the murder of Rigby.

Officers from Counter Terrorism Command arrested the 31-year-old man under the Terrorism Act, on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism. He was taken to a south London police station, where he remains in custody, a police statement said.

Search warrants were being executed at two homes in east London, police said.

Donations flood in

It is understood that the two individuals suspected of carrying out the knife and cleaver attack were known to Britain’s domestic security service. They had featured in previous investigations into other individuals, but were not themselves under surveillance.

CNN understands that one line of inquiry being examined in the Woolwich terror investigation is that suspect Adebolajo might have attempted — but failed — to travel to Somalia some time last year.

The brutal slaying of Rigby near the Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich, a working-class neighborhood in southeast London, shocked people across the United Kingdom.

The 25-year-old, who was married and had a 2-year-old son, was a machine gunner who became a recruiter. He was also a ceremonial military drummer.

His family spoke Friday of their sorrow at losing a son, husband and brother who was dedicated to his job and devoted to his family.

Help for Heroes, a charity which helps injured military veterans and servicemen and women, said Saturday that nearly £600,000 in public donations had poured in since the news of Rigby’s murder — with more still coming in.

“The nation has rallied behind our Armed Forces in an extraordinary and wonderful display of support,” the charity said.

CNN’s Laura Smith-Spark wrote and reported in London, while Erin McLaughlin reported in London and Lonzo Cook reported in Atlanta. CNN’s Neda Farshbaf, Bharati Naik, Dan Rivers, Jonathan Wald and Ed Payne contributed to this report.

Article source: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/25/world/europe/uk-terror-arrest/index.html?eref=edition