Basements. Bathtubs. A horse stall.

People took shelter wherever they could as a massive tornado descended on their Oklahoma communities Monday afternoon.

They had to move fast. The first warnings came just 16 minutes before the tornado developed, according to the National Weather Service in Norman, Okla.

As TV and radio broadcasters, weather watchers and others urged residents to take shelter immediately, many took to whatever refuge they could quickly find.

A resident of Moore, Okla., said she got into her bathtub with her dog and piled on pillows for shelter.

“I just cannot believe that we actually survived this thing,” she told a KFOR-TV reporter.

Another Moore resident told a KWTV reporter that she and her two children also took shelter in a bathtub — and pulled a mattress on top of them for extra protection.

“Our whole house is gone,” the distraught woman said as she held her two kids’ hands. “Everything but where we were is gone.”

Lando Hite, who works at a horse stable in Moore, told KFOR that he sought safety in a horse stall.

“I didn’t have very long at all” before the tornado hit, he said.

While in the stall, “it was just unbearably loud,” he said. “You could see stuff flying everywhere.”

Others at work also had to quickly seek shelter. In advance of the storm, the Oklahoma House of Representatives stopped work so Capitol employees could seek safety in the basement.

The devastating tornado, which had winds up to 200 mph, killed at least 51 people. The terror latest 40 minutes Monday afternoon as the twister destroyed homes, cars and businesses across southern Oklahoma City and its suburbs.

At 2:45 p.m. Monday, the National Weather Service in Norman tweeted “you DO NOT want to be in your car in a tornado! Stay where you are. Get in, get down and cover up.”

At 3:02 p.m., it tweeted this warning: “LARGE VIOLENT TORNADO moving toward Moore and SW OKC. Take cover right NOW!!! Do not wait!!”

On its Web page, the Oklahoma City Police Emergency Management Office warns that “when a tornado is coming, you have a short amount of time to make life or death decisions. Advance planning and quick response are the keys to surviving.”

The Web page tells people at home to head to a the basement, storm cellar or the lowest level of the building. If there is no basement, it advises residents to get away from windows and to go to an inner hallway or a small inner room without windows, such as a bathroom or closet.

If someone is outdoors and no shelter is available, it advises to lie in a ditch or low-lying area or crouch near a strong building.

“Never try to outdrive a tornado,” the site says. “Tornadoes can change direction quickly and can lift up a car or truck and toss it through the air.”

Contributing: The Associated Press

Copyright © 2013 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

Star Jones loves hers. So does Genesa Garbarino. Susan Lyon says hers is too old-fashioned sounding.

Nearly 90% of American adults, 87%, say they at least like their first name, including a third who say they love it, according to a new survey from Ipsos Public Affairs on behalf of ad firm BOHAN and its Why Moms Rule blog.

Just over one in 10, 13%, say they don’t like their first name, including 3% who say they hate it.

Time will tell if the Jacobs, Sophias, Masons and Emmas who topped the Social Security Administration’s just-released list of the most popular 2012 baby names will be fond of their monikers.

Many Americans like their name because it’s unique, different or uncommon, as 23% said in the survey.

A top reason people don’t like their names: It’s difficult to say or spell, says BOHAN CEO John David Bohan, who has gone by his middle name, David, since he was young.

More men say they liked their name more than women do, 90% vs. 84%.

“There were some gender differences there,” Bohan says. “The boy’s names seem to be more conservative and the women talked of their names being more unique.”

Manhattanite Garbarino is happy with her uncommon designation. “Genesis is the first book of the Bible, and I’m the first born,” she says. “That’s where they got the root … My father is Italian, so they put a little twist on Genesis and landed on Genesa.”

But when she was younger, she hated it. “I wanted to be Tiffany,” she says.

Lawyer and TV personality Jones was born Starlet Marie Jones, but in college her name was shortened to Star by girlfriends.

“As a little kid I would get teased ‘star light star bright,’” she says. “So that wasn’t fun.”

But as an adult, the name “suits my personality,” Jones says. “I often wonder if I would be so daring, so willing to step out of my comfort zone if my name was Harriet.”

For parents deciding what to name a new baby, here are some suggestions based on new research from job search site TheLadders: Lynn, Tom, Christine or Bob.

Lynn and Tom topped the list of female and male names associated with making the most money, according to TheLadders, which recently examined its database of nearly 6 million job-seekers for naming trends. Christine and Bob are the most frequent names of those who have “C-level” positions such as chief executive officer, chief operating officer or chief marketing officer.

“A child’s name is just as important as a brand name,” Bohan says, and a name that is “easy to spell and easy to pronounce is also very important from a career standpoint.”

People like to hear stories about where their name came from and if there is any history or tradition or associated with it, says Bohan, who suggests that families discuss the origin of a child’s name.

“That would be a great conversation to have with your mom or dad,” he says. “The one conversation I’d love to hear is (musician) Frank Zappa’s with his son Dweezil.”

BOHAN President Kerry Graham was named after a female friend of his parents. “They liked her name and liked her, liked the couple and it just sounded good with the last name Graham,” he says.

He’s gotten used to the name now, but “it was a curse” growing up with such an unusual name for a boy, he says.

BOHAN communications director Hollie Rapello has a story for her son. One year after giving birth in 2009, she feared that the name she gave her son, Stuart, didn’t match his personality. So she and her husband, Paul, changed it legally to Paul Stuart Rapello Jr. They call the 3-year-old P.J.

“It was a very personal and public branding ‘oops!” she says on WhyMomsRule.com, which she edits. “After 15 years in the advertising business working with some of the most well-known global brands, I goofed on the biggest branding assignment of my life, the naming of my son.”

Copyright © 2013 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

The three woman captives in Cleveland finally have a taste of freedom, but their adjustment back to any sort of normal life is going to be an extensive, difficult transition, psychologists say.

“It’s going to be a long-term struggle,” says Rona Fields, a psychologist who has researched violence against women and has treated torture victims.

Amanda Berry, 27; Gina DeJesus, 23; and Michelle Knight, 32, were held in a Cleveland home for as long as a decade. They escaped late Monday after Berry’s screams alerted a neighbor, who helped her out through a small opening in a door. A 6-year-old girl was also freed.

Police did not describe conditions inside the house and declined to say whether the women were restrained or if any of them had been sexually assaulted.

They arrested three suspects, brothers Ariel Castro, 52, the owner of the house where the women were found, Pedro Castro, 54, and Onil Castro, 50.

Much is not known about the victims’ captivity, but Fields says they will experience post-traumatic stress, self-esteem problems and difficulty making decisions. They also may have trouble reconnecting with family members they haven’t seen in years.

“I would like be able to say, ‘Oh, they are going to be fine. Give them some warmth and love and chicken soup,’ ” she says. “But in reality, that isn’t the case.”

She and Peter Suedfeld, a psychologist who specializes in adaptation to stressful environments, say the women are likely to need intensive therapy.

“It’s highly likely they’ll have post-traumatic stress syndrome, but that depends on how they were treated when there were there,” Suedfeld says. “My advice would be to let them get used to things gradually.”

Suedfeld advises the woman not to take trips to crowded areas or have news conferences until after they’ve had time to settle in.

“If they’ve been for a long time in a situation with low stimulation and low novelty, having too much of that at once can be overwhelming and stressful,” he says.

And if they had thoughts like those of Elizabeth Smart, who was kidnapped in Salt Lake City when she was 14 and held for nine months before being discovered in 2003, the women probably had fears that they wouldn’t be found alive.

During her captivity, Smart worried at times that her family had given up hope of finding her alive, she told The Des Moines Registerlast year.

“It’s not uncommon for every average person to think after the first 24 hours, if you don’t find them that they’re dead,” she said. “So yes, absolutely, there did come a point where I was like, ‘You know, chances are they probably think I’m dead.’ “

Because so much emotion comes with a situation like this, Fields suggests that family members of the captors also get psychological help.

For friends, neighbors, even strangers who want to show their support, psychologist Suedfeld urges not phoning or trying to visit. Instead, he advises, drop off a letter or do something else unobtrusive to show happiness that they’ve been released.

“I don’t think people should be besieging the house or phoning the house,” he says.

Smart, speaking on ABC’s Good Morning America on Tuesday, also emphasized the importance of respecting the privacy of the women as they recover.

Another well-known kidnapping victim, Jaycee Dugard, who was held captive for 18 years and had two children before she was found in 2009, issued a statement saying: “These individuals need the opportunity to heal and connect back into the world. This isn’t who they are. It is only what happened to them. The human spirit is incredibly resilient. More than ever this reaffirms we should never give up hope.”

Contributing: The Associated Press

Copyright © 2013 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

A favorable weather shift Saturday helped firefighters better contain a raging Southern California wildfire that has blazed since Thursday.

As of Saturday afternoon, the firefighters “were making good progress,” said Ventura County Fire Department spokesman Bill Nash. “We’re gaining an upper hand on it and we’re cautiously optimistic.”

When the blaze began, the temperature was in the 90s, and humidity was 1%, says Nash. But cooling temperatures and rising humidity has allowed the firefighters “to make some headway.”

The fire, about 50 miles northwest of Los Angeles, burned 28,000 acres by Saturday morning as nearly 2,000 fire personnel used 247 engines, 11 helicopters, six air tankers and other equipment to battle the flames.

Capt. Mike Lindbery of the Ventura County Fire Department said early Saturday that crews intended to take advantage of lower temperatures and higher humidity.

“That will give us a chance because it’s going to really bring that fire activity down quite a bit,” he said. “I think we will make some significant progress.”

As of Saturday morning, 30% of the fire was contained. Nash said he expects it to be fully contained by Monday, and possibly earlier, if the cooler weather and rising humidity continues.

“We have 4,000 homes threatened, zero destroyed and 15 damaged,” he said, attributing the low amount of loss to the work of the firefighters.

Five commercial properties had been damaged and 40 outbuildings had been destroyed or damaged as of Saturday. An outbuilding is a detached structure, such as a shed, garage or gazebo.

The fire cause is under investigation. “We really want to find out what caused this,” Nash said. “If it was criminal activity or negligence, there may be an opportunity for cost recovery.”

As of Saturday morning, the cost to battle the fire was $4.5 million, he said.

Thousands of homes are still at risk, but residents were grateful so many were spared as the fire quickly moved through the Camarillo Springs area and threatened their homes.

Flames came within 30 feet of the house Shayne Poindexter was building.

”It came pretty close” he said. “These firemen did a tremendous job. Very, very thankful for them.”

The type of blaze that hit the area usually doesn’t strike Southern California wild land until September or October, after the summer has dried out hillside vegetation. But the state has seen a severe drought during the past year, with the water content of California’s snowpack only 17% of normal.

On Saturday, more than 4,000 firefighters were battling six active wildfires across the state, said Daniel Berlant, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

“What we’re experiencing across California, including in Ventura, is incredibly dry conditions,” he said. “Fires are burning a lot faster and a lot more intensely than they would in a normal May.”

Given the dry environment, he urges residents and vacationers to be extremely cautious with anything that has an open flame or that can give off a spark.

“Most of the fires we respond to are human-caused through accidents or negligence,” he said, adding that one major fire starter is power equipment, such as a lawn mower blade hitting a rock and causing a spark.

The potential for more wildfires is just going to increase in the coming months.

“Unfortunately, as we move into the summer months it’s only going to get drier,” he said.

Forecasters said a weekend of increased humidity should help the teams fighting the Southern California blaze.

“It’s a total turnaround from what we had,” said Kurt Kaplan, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Oxnard. “It should be a much better day for firefighters tomorrow.”

While there was progress in getting the fire under control, there was still much work to do, Nash said.

“Containment means we have a line completely around the fire; it doesn’t mean it’s out,” he said. While the blaze will likely be contained by Monday, it would take days or weeks to get the fire to be completely extinguished.

“That process can be long and painstaking,” he said.

Contributing: Associated Press

Copyright © 2013 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

As the events surrounding the Boston Marathon bombings unfolded, social media were a great supplier of information for many — and a source of inaccurate information and frustration for some.

A quarter of Americans got information about the devastating explosions and the hunt for the bombers on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, according to a report out Tuesday from the Pew Research Center. Young Americans in particular kept up-to-date through social media. Slightly more than half (56%) of an 18-to-29 year subgroup polled by Pew got bombing-related news through social networking sites.

Those sites offer a convenient way to get news, especially since many users are constantly on them, says Michael Dimock, director of Pew’s public opinion and polling project.

They “are on Facebook, and the information is just flowing at them,” he says.

Yet while social network updates can feed a news-hungry audience with relevant and interesting updates, they can also breed false information, says social media expert Dave Kerpen, CEO of the social media marketing firm Likeable Media.

As people on social media, including journalists, sometimes conveyed wrong information last week, “it was challenging to know what (sources) to trust,” he says.

Even Kerpen accidentally shared incorrect information. He can’t recall what it was — he deleted it from his Twitter feed and apologized for posting it.

Last week, after CNN and the Associated Press wrongly reported that the suspects were in custody, many others picked up the news.WCVB-TV Boston, crediting the AP with the news, wrongly said that an arrest was “imminent.” It was retweeted 87 times

On Monday, social media site Reddit acknowledged its role in helping to disseminate false information, saying, “Some of the activity on reddit fueled online witch hunts and dangerous speculation.”

Reddit also said it apologized to the family of missing Brown University student Sunil Tripathi, who was misidentified on social media as a bombing suspect.

Another challenge for social media users in the wake of a tragedy: figuring out what is appropriate to share and what is not. For instance, some social media users posted graphic images of bombing victims.

Others posted ordinary personal updates, not related to the explosions, on the day they happened and afterwards. That could be seem insensitive, Kerpen says.

“If you’re on Facebook and Twitter to get news on the bombing suspects and you see a company posting a sale or a friend posting a picture from a kid’s birthday party, neither is relevant to you,” he says.

He notes, though, that some people think it’s fine to post unrelated content when it comes to terrorism as a way to show that an act designed to terrorize won’t stop everyday life.

About one in 10 Pew respondents (12%) said social media sites offered an “easy” and “convenient” way to follow the Boston Marathon news. Nearly the same number (11%) said social networks provided “fast” and “up-to-date” information.

Six percent said they used social media to keep up with friends and family who were in Boston. And 6% said they went to such sites to get different perspectives or because they provided “uncensored” information.

While social media kept Americans informed, many people also turned to traditional sources to keep up on the events of last week.

TV was the most widely used source of information about the bombings, according to Pew, used by 80% of Americans. Four in 10 kept up via radio reports, and three in 10 read newspapers.

Nearly half got news online or on a mobile device.

Overall, 63% of Americans said they followed the bombing-related updates very closely, making it one of the biggest news stories since 2001, Pew said. News events that drew more public interest were the 9/11 attacks, Hurricane Katrina, the 2008 economic downturn and the 2002 sniper shootings near Washington, D.C.

Copyright © 2013 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.