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8:30 am ET - Casey Anthony trial - Testimony resumes in the murder trial of Casey Anthony, accused of murdering her young daughter in 2008.
[Updated at 11:10 p.m. ET] Storm-battered Joplin, Missouri, continued search-and-rescue efforts Wednesday, three days after a killer tornado tore through the city of 50,000 people.
Even as cleanup crews with frayed nerves sifted through the rubble, twisters and severe weather churned through America's heartland. More than 60 Oklahoma counties were under a state of emergency Wednesday due to a tornado watch.
The power of a top-scale EF5 tornado, with winds of 200 mph, was nowhere more evident than in Joplin, a city at the intersection of Kansas, Arkansas and Oklahoma.
[cnn-video url="http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2011/05/26/natpkg.joplin.closet.cnn"%5DOn Tuesday, residents and business owners literally picked up the pieces as they reflected on the twister that has killed at least 125 people and left more than 1,500 unaccounted for.
After crawling and climbing over mangled wooden debris, a couch and a water heater blocking the staircase, we made it, to what used to be the second floor of Frank Wood's home in Piedmont, Oklahoma.
"This is it," Wood said, looking out over his 12-acre lot. "We used to have a beautiful view."
Frank Wood and his two children survived a direct hit on their home by a tornado that ripped across Oklahoma on Tuesday afternoon.
The Woods' home was originally three stories tall, but the top floor is nowhere to be found. Frank Wood's pickup truck is a mangled mess, sitting in a ditch 300 yards from the driveway.
The family survived because of a "safe room" built into the garage. Frank Wood rushed into the safe room and locked it.
Roxie, the Wood family
He says the room is so fortified that he had no idea how bad the damage was until he walked out and realized the top two floors of the house had been blown off.
As the family rushed into the safe room, they weren't able to grab their dog, Roxie. After the storm passed, the kids rushed out to find the tan boxer, but she was gone.
But Wednesday morning, Frank Wood finally got some good news. An oil rig worker almost two miles away had found Roxie wandering around in a field, unscathed except for a small scratch on a front leg.
Editor's note: CNN producer Eric Marrapodi was on the ground in Joplin, Missouri, when the weather took another nasty turn Monday morning. Here's what he's seeing and witnessing as the sun comes up, but the storms keep coming.
It smells like fresh-cut lumber in Joplin, Missouri. It's the telephone poles, snapped like matchsticks.
We are taking cover in our live truck after the heavens opened up. There's a leak in the roof, but it's mostly dry.
As lightning pops and thunder booms, you can see the locals flinch. It's likely too close for comfort after they lost 89 neighbors to a half-mile wide twister.
The beating rain will wash away some of the dirt kicked up, but it won't unbend the basketball backboard that went from vertical to horizontal during the tornado.
I still can't figure out how the wicker chair got under the car that's under the snapped telephone pole.
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