The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department released a video Monday of body camera footage of officers responding to the May 16 tornado that hit St. Louis and killed five people.
In the 2½-minute edited video, officers climb through debris and talk to residents who are trapped in their homes.
In one of the clips, an officer stands perched near a building on a pile of drywall and bricks.
“We hear him in the basement, and there’s an active gas leak,” one officer says, before yelling out, “Can you see my light?”
The person responds that they cannot.
“OK, so he’s more over there,” the officer says.
The video shows other officers climbing into windows, responding to people trapped in collapsed buildings and transporting an elderly woman with oxygen issues to a hospital.
There has been criticism of the emergency response after the tornado. Victims who were in Centennial Christian Church when it collapsed told St. Louis Public Radio their calls to 911 redirected to the nonemergency response line. A spokesperson for SLMPD said the department was slammed with hundreds of emergency calls in the hours after the tornado.
