Published January 13, 2015
Steps lead to nowhere. Concrete foundations stand bare. Stop signs bend parallel to the ground.
But right next to obliterated houses stands a home barely touched.
Such is the tangled aftermath of a tornado that killed at least 22 people early Sunday as it followed an erratic path across the countryside of western Kentucky and southwestern Indiana.
With winds of at least 150 mph, the storm inflicted its worst damage on the Eastbrook Mobile Home Park in Evansville (search), where splintered trees were filled with a tangled mess of insulation and aluminum siding.
Clifford and Marcella Rawlings were asleep and didn't hear the wail of tornado sirens about 2 a.m.
In an instant, the balmy autumn night turned into a nightmare as the tornado roared by in the darkness, buffeting the couple's mobile home.
"It just seemed like we jumped two feet in the bed. We thought it was an earthquake," Rawlings said.
When the storm passed, more than a dozen of Rawlings' neighbors were dead. Survivors cried out for help, while others wandered in the pre-dawn blackness across neighborhoods filled with shattered glass, doors, mattresses, furniture and clothing.
Rescuers who arrived on the scene shortly after the storm found children and parents looking for each other. After finding several bodies in the debris, firefighters were elated to pull a child alive from beneath part of a mobile home.
Gov. Mitch Daniels (search) surveyed the storm damage in Vanderburgh County (search) and adjoining Warrick County by helicopter, describing "incredible devastation next to apparently unscathed properties."
Marsha Tweedy broke into tears Sunday evening as she walked through the remains of the farm house where her 28-year-old daughter, Cheryl Warren, had died.
She drove toward Warren's home after hearing the tornado had hit Degonia Springs (search) in Warrick County, but the roads were blocked by authorities.
Only later did she learn that her daughter, eight months pregnant, her daughter's husband, Jeremy, and their 4-year-old son, Isaac, were dead.
"They were a beautiful family," Tweedy said. "They didn't have much, but they enjoyed everything they had."
https://www.foxnews.com/story/tornado-destroys-some-houses-spares-others