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• MOORE, Okla. (AP) -- I left the office as soon as I saw the tornado warnings on TV. I had photographed about a dozen twisters before in the past decade, and knew that if I didn't get in my car before the funnel cloud hit, it would be too late.
• By the time I got to Moore, all I could see was destruction. I walked toward a group of people standing by a heaping mound of rubble too big to be a home. A woman told me it was a school.
• I expected chaos as I approached the heaping mounds of bricks and twisted metal where Plaza Towers Elementary once stood. Instead, it was calm and orderly as police and firefighters pulled children out one-by-one from underneath a large chunk of a collapsed wall.
• Parents and neighborhood volunteers stood in a line and helped pass the rescued children from one set of arms to another to get them out of harm's way. Adults carried the children through a field littered with shredded pieces of wood, cinder block and insulation to a triage center in a parking lot.
• They worked quickly and quietly so rescuers could try to hear voices of children trapped beneath the rubble.
• ___
Lawmakers get first crack at IRS commissioner who was in charge when tea party targeted
• WASHINGTON (AP) -- Lawmakers are getting their first chance to question the former head of the Internal Revenue Service, the man who ran the agency when agents were improperly targeting tea party groups.
• Some of the questions on Tuesday will be direct: What did you know, and when did you know it?
• They also want to know why former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman didn't tell Congress that agents had been singling out conservative political groups for additional scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status -- even after he was briefed.
• Shulman, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, left the IRS in November when his five-year term ended. He could prove to be a significant player in a (Continued on page 28)
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