Joplin missing

Joplin missing

Joplin missing. As emergency workers in Joplin searched Thursday for more than 230 people listed as missing after a tornado tore through the city, one was sitting in a wooden chair outside the wreckage of her home, cuddling her cat.
Sally Adams, 75, said neighbors rescued her Sunday after the storm destroyed her house and took her to a friend's home. When The Associated Press told Adams she was on the missing list, she laughed and said "Get me off of there!"

Missouri officials had said they believed many of the missing were safe and alive but simply hadn't been in touch with friends and family. When they released the list of 232 names Thursday morning, they urged survivors to check in. Cell phone service in the city remains spotty.

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Adams said she lost her phone in the storm and had no way of contacting her family to let them know she was OK. She was placed on the missing list after relatives called a hot line and posted Facebook messages saying she was missing.

Adams' son, Bill Adams, said he told authorities his mother was alive after he learned she was safe, yet she remained on their unaccounted-for list Thursday afternoon.

Amid the chaos, CBS News correspondent Ben Tracy reports the wreckage stretches for miles, and while some families are still looking through it -- others have a reason to stop.

For more than three days, Michelle Hare had been searching for something she cannot replace, her 16-year-old son Lantz. He was driving with a friend Sunday who said the two tried to take cover in the parking lot of a grocery store. The tornado shattered the windows and crumpled the car, leaving his backpack in the wreckage.

When CBS News talked to Hare Thursday morning, she was still positive. But, just minutes after our interview, a police officer arrived to notify her that Lantz had been found dead.

"No, I don't want this [news], it will never be right," she said afterward. "But it is in some way a comfort to know he's in a better place and that we don't have to wonder if he's out there needing us."