Categories of Tornadoes; Video of Avalanche from Car; Space X Crew Dragon Capsule Docks with ISS; Corrosion Being Fixed on the Golden Gate Bridge
CARL AZUZ, CNN 10 ANCHOR: Welcome to our viewers worldwide, I`m Carl Azuz and this edition of CNN 10 begins with news of a tornado and an avalanche. First in the eastern part of the U.S. state of Alabama, rescue crews are searching through the wreckage left by an EF 4 tornado. According to one of the people helping out, the homes in its path didn`t stand a chance. We told you yesterday that a string of twisters killed 23 people in Lee County, Alabama. When this show was produced, officials said several more as many as eight were still missing. There wasn`t an official count of how many were injured but nearby hospitals said more than 70 people have been treated there with injuries ranging from minor to serious. One woman who wasn`t in her home when it was destroyed described how her boyfriend barely survived.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He seen the porch fly up. The front porch is like a patio. He seen that fly up and he said he had just enough time to dive to the couch which the couch was about a foot away from the screen door and he just held onto the couch for dear life.</s>AZUZ: Alabama`s governor extended a state of emergency there. It was originally issued last month because of tornadoes and severe weather and one was also declared in three nearby Georgia counties. That states governor says more than 20 homes and a couple businesses were completely destroyed and dozens more houses were damaged in some way by the storm. A sheriff in eastern Alabama said it looked like someone had taken a blade and just scraped the ground. What kind of disaster would have this kind of power?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Technically a tornado is just a violent, rotating column of air coming out of the bottom of a thunderstorm but it takes a lot to get that violently rotating column to come out. All you need for a tornado really to form though are thunderstorms and a jet stream. That jet streams aloft and makes the energy. If you have moisture at the surface dry air, cold air pushing that moisture up you can get a tornado to form in any state. Those days where all the ingredients combined. You get the humidity. You get the dry air. You get the jet stream. You get upper energy in the jet stream. You get winds turning as you go aloft. The higher you go the winds actually change direction that can cause storms though (ph) those things all cause storms to exist and get big. Those are the ingredients that cause a big tornado day. So now the EF scale Enhanced Fujita Scale starts at zero and goes only to five and everything above 200 miles per hour is considered a EF5 tornado. If you have a zero, you`re going to lose shingles. A one you may lose a couple of boards on the roof. A two you lose all the windows and maybe even a wall. A three, EF3, you will lose a couple of walls on the outside but there will still be a part of the home standing. An F4 most of the home is gone but you`ll still see the refrigerator. You`ll still see a closet and you`ll still see the bathroom. An EF5 you cannot find the house. It`s completely gone. We don`t know how big that Fujita scale will be, how big that tornado will be literally until after we look at the damage. We have this - - this almost this triangulation that no other in the country in the world, no other region in the world has. We have the Rocky Mountains to our west. We have the Gulf of Mexico in our south. We have Canada and very cold air masses coming down from the north. All of those things combined make tornado alley, technically the plains. Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska all the way to Chicago, as far south as the southeast including Georgia and Alabama, that`s basically the new or the bigger tornado alley. The greatest threat of a tornado is being hit by something that the tornado is moving. If you`re outside or if you`re not protected inside, if you get hit by a 140 mile per hour 2`x4` you`re going to be killed. So you need to be inside on the lowest level. Somewhere in the middle of the home away from windows. When you hear the word warning and you hear your county, that`s when you need to take cover. When you hear the word watch, that means something might happen today. Let`s have a plan. When you hear the word warning, it`s too late to make a plan. You need to already have the plan. Warning`s the long word. It`s the bad one.</s>AZUZ: : A little more than 24 hours after launching from Florida`s Kennedy Space Center a capsule made by Space X successfully docked with the International Space Station. Here`s why this is significant. This was a test. The company Space X was working to prove that its new capsule, the Crew Dragon Capsule, was capable of ferrying astronauts safely from earth to the ISS. No one was actually aboard the Crew Dragon when it launched. Only after it docked with the ISS did the people who were already aboard the space station go inside the Crew Dragon. Since NASA retired its space shuttle program in 2011, the U.S. has paid for astronauts to hitch a ride on Russia`s Soyuz spacecraft to get to the ISS. Space X could get them there on American vehicles once again. Space X is considered a private company while NASA is an agency of the Federal government, though Space X has received billions of dollars in funding from NASA. Assuming the rest of its current mission goes well, Space X plans to use its Crew Dragon Capsule to ferry two astronauts to the ISS this July. 10 Second Trivia. Which of these U.S. bridges was completed in 1937? Golden Gate Bridge, Brooklyn Bridge, Mackinac Bridge, or Seven Mile Bridge. It`s neither the oldest nor the youngest on this list but the Golden Gate Bridge is the only one that was finished in 1937. At that time it was the world`s tallest and longest suspension bridge and two of the elements that challenged its construction storms and fog continue to test the Golden Gate Bridge today. Part of it had to be closed to traffic recently after a lingering thunderstorm damaged its northbound lanes and protecting it from corrosion and rust is a never ending battle.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Golden Gate Bridge gets its name because it spans what`s called the Golden Gate Straight. This is a three mile long and one mile wide body of water that connects the Pacific Ocean to the San Francisco Bay. Before the Golden Gate Bridge there was a bustling ferry system that ran people and commerce between San Francisco and the Redwood Empire to the north. It`s actually unknown how many people worked on the Golden Gate Bridge at the time of construction because records were - - were scarce from that time. Today we have close to 200 employees who work to maintain, to paint, to weld, to make sure that the bridge is in - - in good and safe operating condition. So, we`re right now getting sand blasting on the outer part of the bridge which is up underneath.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right now where - - where the walkway is, where the pedestrians ride after 3:30pm. So the cars are probably just 15 feet out. You can`t feel it but the bridge is probably moving, you know, like this as we`re standing.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In a containment like this, a rough estimate, 16 people sandblasting for a month and a half. Our painters will go out to the most critical, you know, structural areas of the bridge where the fog and the salt and the wind has corroded the paints. The salt eats this bridge up. The fog eats this bridge up. If we don`t continue to paint it, its just going to rot away.</s>AZUZ: Having the right tires can make a car fly and in this case we mean that literally. This is a tire company`s concept. It`s not real, yet. It would have tires pull double duty as propellers that could reposition upward to take a car up, up and away. It`s being pitched as part of an autonomous car of the future. No idea how much something like this plus the flying car would cost, but if you`re asking why do you need four of them? It`s because half that many would be too "tired" to fly. I thought that was a "wheely" good pun. You could almost hear the "rim" shot afterward. It`s fun to take ideas like that for a spin. Not every pun has been "spoken" for and we`re always "driven" to "ride" out some more. Even if that means sounding a little "lug nutty" at the end of the road. I`m Carl Azuz and that`s CNN 10. END