As many as 91 people were killed and children were feared buried under the rubble of their school after a massive tornado ripped through suburban Oklahoma City on Monday afternoon, leveling all in its path.

As of late Monday night, 51 people were confirmed dead and some two dozen children were missing. But officials said early Tuesday they expect the death toll to rise by 40 as more bodies are sent to the local morgue.

Whole neighborhoods were flattened, families shattered and loved ones unaccounted for in the chaos of wind-scattered debris. Rescue workers combed through the wreckage of two elementary schools as darkness covered destroyed communities.

Of the 91 dead, 20 were children, and a local TV station reported that one was a 7-month-old baby.

Tiffany Thronesberry thought her mother, Barbara Jarrell, might have been one of the victims. “I got a phone call from her screaming: ‘Help! Help! I can’t breathe. My house is on top of me!’” Thronesberry said.

First responders were able to rescue Jarrell.

But many weren’t so lucky in Moore, a town of 56,000 people 11 miles south of Oklahoma City that took a direct hit from the vicious vortex.

“The whole city looks like a debris field,” said Glenn Lewis, mayor of Moore.

The calamity blew into town on the heels of a twister Sunday in the same area that killed two people and injured more than 30.

Monday’s deadly funnel cloud also came almost two years to the day of the deadliest tornado to hit the United States since record-keeping began in 1950 — a catastrophic twister that slammed Joplin, Mo., on May 22, 2011, killing 158 people and causing $2.8 billion in damage.

On Monday, residents were only given a warning of 16 minutes by the National Weather Service before the twister’s ferocious tail touched down, whipping up apocalyptic destruction.

Sirens sounded and screams filled the air as the 2-mile-wide buzzsaw struck at 3 p.m. and wreaked havoc on the ground for more than 40 terrifying minutes.

Some likened the sound of the storm to the roar of a train, a reporter for KFOR television in Oklahoma City said.

“It’s basically just a war zone,” said an overwhelmed emergency responder.

The rescue effort was a tremendous undertaking as workers were tasked with picking through a debris corridor stretching anywhere from 12 to 20 miles. As of Monday night, there were 233 confirmed injuries, including puncture wounds caused by flying debris.

The storm roughly followed the path of a 1999 twister that packed winds of up to 300 mph, killing 46.

Officials said at least two schools crowded with children were heavily damaged and that a hospital where victims were being taken was also hit and had to be evacuated. A movie theater in Moore was also devastated.

At Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore, where 75 students were in the building before the storm struck, firefighters frantically searched the debris Monday for as many as two dozen missing children, ages 5 to 8.

The twister tore the roof off the building, knocked down walls and turned the playground into a twisted mess of plastic and metal.

“I had to hold on to the wall to keep myself safe because I didn’t want to fly away in the tornado,” one young girl told KFOR.

At least seven children were found drowned in a pool at the school, KFOR reported. Witnesses said teachers at the school used their bodies as human shields to protect children.

The students and teachers still missing were last seen huddled in a hallway when the building’s roof and walls caved in.

James Rushing, who lives across the street from Plaza Towers Elementary, said he ran to the school before the tornado hit to be with his 5-year-old foster son, Aiden. “About two minutes after I got there, the school started coming apart,” Rushing said.

Rescue workers wearing bright yellow kept up their search at the school under floodlights late Monday night, using machinery to cut through the muddy wreckage. Parents with missing kids waited anxiously in a nearby church, and a man with a megaphone called out the names of surviving children.

But stretchers lay empty and medical workers stood idle as precious minutes ticked by and additional survivors failed to emerge from the rubble.

On Facebook, people with missing relatives posted desperate messages seeking help.

“Looking for information on Buster Mosier from Plaza Elementary School. Uncle is worried sick. 2rd Grade. 7 years old,” one Facebook user wrote.

Around 7 p.m., authorities said it was possible that there were no more survivors amid the school’s rubble.

Earlier Monday, students pulled alive from the school were passed down a human chain of rescuers to a triage center in a parking lot.

Officials said Briarwood Elementary School, also in Moore, was also wrecked by the tornado as well. Teachers and students sought shelter in bathrooms when the twister struck.

After the tornado finally lifted and moved on, children with muddy shirts and pants ran off the school property weeping and shrieking while teachers tried their best to corral them and to provide comfort.

Video footage posted by The Oklahoman newspaper showed panicked mother Trenda Purcell clinging to her first-grade son, Kamden, with tears of relief running down her face.

Search crews with rescue dogs remained at the school Monday night, said Lewis, the mayor.

“Our hearts are just broken for the parents that are wondering,” Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin said.

At South Moore High School, coaches told about 15 students to go to a locker room and put on football helmets for protection, Garrett Bennett, a 15-year-old freshman, told the The Oklahoman.

“They came in and told us to get on the floor and put your head down,” he said.

Adding to the chaos, the hospital closest to the disaster scene, Moore Medical Center, was heavily damaged. One report said the top floor of the hospital building was ripped off. “Our hospital has been devastated,” Lewis told CNN. “We had a two-story building. Now we have a one.”

At least 120 people were being treated at area hospitals, including 70 children, officials said. The monstrous tornado, packing winds of over 200 mph, hit hardest in the communities of Moore and nearby Newcastle.

The National Weather Service said the twister registered a jaw-dropping F-4 on the Fujita scale, the second most powerful storm on the tornado-ranking scale.

The governor, who toured the devastated areas Monday, said President Obama called her to offer federal assistance and gave her the direct line to his office. Later, Obama signed a disaster declaration for Oklahoma and ordered federal aid to supplement state and local recovery efforts in the area.

But Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), who supported an amendment last year that would have reduced Hurricane Sandy disaster aid, again played the fiscal hawk.

Coburn told Roll Call that he would “absolutely” demand that any federal disaster aid for his home state be offset with cuts elsewhere.

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