Out of the Wreckage

A wave of tornadoes brings death, destruction—and selfless acts of bravery.

Little Boy Found

LITTLE BOY FOUND
Castalian Springs, Tennessee—Two hours after the tornadoes tore through town, firefighter David Harmon, 31, and his partner, Karl Wegner, made one last pass through a field in which a young woman had already been found dead. It was pitch-dark as the two trudged through the mud, waving their flashlights. Every so often, one would call out to the other when he spotted something.

"I've got a baby stroller over here," Wegner shouted.

"And I've got a doll," Harmon called back. The doll was lying face-down, arms over its head and dressed in a green T-shirt and a loosened diaper.

Then it moved.

"It's not a doll!" Harmon called out again.

"As soon as we rolled him over, he gasped and started crying," Harmon says. Unsure of the extent of the baby's injuries, he carefully aligned his neck and spine and then cradled him in his arms. The baby stopped wailing almost immediately.

"Hang in there, big guy," Harmon urged. "Stay with me."

The baby, who they soon found out was 11-month-old Kyson Stowell, had lived nearby with his mother, Kerri, 23, a single parent. That evening, Kerri had called her parents, who lived nearby, and told them the TV had gone dark. "The storm is heading your way," Kay Stowell told her daughter, and then the line went silent.

"We knew something was wrong," Kerri's dad, Douglas, says. He and his wife navigated their car around fallen trees and other debris to get to Kerri's home. Once there, they found the house was gone, and a hundred yards away, emergency workers were huddling around something. It was the Stowells' grandson. At the sound of his grandparents' voices, he opened his eyes for the first time.

A worker then asked Douglas who else had been in the house, and it was soon determined that the victim in the field was Kerri.

At Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, a pediatric surgeon verified that Kyson's injuries were "relatively minor"—incredible given that the 25-pound child had been hurled the length of a football field by the force of the storm. "He's a miracle," says Douglas, who will raise the boy with his wife.

Kyson celebrated his first birthday ten days after he was found, and Harmon was invited. It was a party filled with emotion for the boy rescued and the daughter the Stowells lost. Harmon says he wants to stay in the boy's life somehow. "I'd love to get to know him," he says.

THE CAREGIVERS
Jackson, Tennessee—For six weeks last year, the senior nursing students at Union University had practiced their emergency medical skills at a local hospital. And just days before the tornado struck, they sat through a class on disaster triage. Still, they'd never faced anything like the devastation that visited their campus when the tornado hit that February evening.

Candace Cross, 21, Anika Schulte, 20, and 12 dormitory mates huddled in their bathrooms. "We were just praying," says Cross, who is from Lebanon, Tennessee. When the wind died down, the shaken students began to pick their way across the destroyed campus—approximately 40 percent of the dorms were wrecked—to the Penick Academic Complex.

On the way, Schulte, who is from Woodbury, Minnesota, spotted a young woman bleeding heavily from a gash on her leg. The student nurse's instincts and training kicked in, and she made sure the woman sat down, while Cross sprinted to the athletic office for an armful of first-aid kits.

The students created a makeshift triage station. Then Cross began to make her way down darkened hallways, searching for wounded people. She cleaned and dressed injuries. Glass had to be left alone, says Schulte, "because I didn't have enough light to get it out."

Help arrived shortly to care for the injured. But, as Schulte says, "for a while, we were the best they had."

HELPING HANDS
Highland, Arkansas—The lights went out at the Timberline Restaurant almost an hour before closing. Manager Billy Shelton, Jr., looked out the front door—and saw a tornado coming straight for him.

The retired Army sergeant quickly herded seven people, including his wife, Sharon, into the back room. Seconds later, the twister hit, taking the dining room's roof and two walls.

Shelton barely had time to register the damage when he saw a woman fleeing the remains of the house across the street. She said her elderly father, Stanley Gamble, was trapped, and she and her mother, Louise, could not free him.

Shelton and customer Patrick Loerzel climbed the pile of debris. "We'll never be able to lift this off him," Shelton remembers thinking. But the men surprised themselves by dragging the rubble off. Both husband and wife got away with just a few broken bones.

Back at the remains of the Timberline, Shelton's customers and staff were heading out into the night. "Call us," he said, "when you make it home."

Endless Love

ENDLESS LOVE
Greenville, Kentucky—The deadly tornadoes had swept through Greenville just days before, and as residents began to tally their losses, they wore the stunned looks of the traumatized.

But when the bright yellow bus pulled up beside the temporary Red Cross and FEMA stations, parents and kids alike perked up at the sight of the portrait on its side—a laughing baby boy who's giving the thumbs- up sign.

"Mommy," yelled one youngster, "I want to go on the bus with the happy boy!" Inside, the kids descended on arts and crafts, DVDs, and games—anything to distract them from the nightmare memories of howling winds and falling trees.

"It's incredible," says Kathryn Martin, 29, who had driven the bus more than 70 miles, from Evansville, Indiana. "They just go off into la-la land; they can be kids again."

The mobile day-care center is named for Martin's little boy, C.J., who was killed along with two other family members when a tornado struck their town in 2005. He was two years old. The idea of helping other twister victims came to her in May 2006, after a tornado blasted Otwell, Indiana. Martin and a friend headed to the scene, and she spent the day with a family who had lost their home, soothing the kids simply by coloring with them.

"From then on," says Martin, who is married with three children, "we knew we had to do something."

After donations of more than $120,000, C.J.'s Bus was launched in August 2007 and two months later made its maiden voyage to Owensboro, Kentucky, for tornado relief.

Martin says she can think of no greater legacy for her son than to help children recover from the trauma of a tornado. "This bus is not about me, and it's not about C.J. anymore," she says. "It's about those next people we're going to help."

THE GOOD SON
Holland, Kentucky—Shirley Ennis, 58, said good night to her son Jerry, 32, and turned in for the evening. They were safe, it seemed; a tornado warning had been canceled at 1:30 a.m.

At 2 a.m., however, 160 mph winds hit the tiny farming community, picking up the Ennises' double-wide mobile home and tossing it into a gully 50 yards away. His leg broken, Jerry pulled himself from the rubble. But his mother was pinned under the wreckage of the house.

Dragging his leg behind him, Jerry found a pair of two-by-fours and created makeshift crutches. He hobbled to his 2003 Chevy Silverado in the driveway. Though most of its windows were blown out, the engine miraculously came to life.

A fallen power line stopped Jerry as he made his way slowly toward town, but firefighter Rickey Cooksey spotted him and offered assistance. "My mom's down there in the trailer," Jerry gasped. "You have to help her. Don't worry about me."

Cooksey and a group of emergency workers headed toward the gully, quickly locating Shirley. "It's cold under here, but I can breathe," she said. Two airbags were inflated to lift the wooden trailer frame off her, and the rescuers slid her to safety.

"Jerry is the hero," says Ed Taylor, the paramedic who drove him to the hospital. "His only request was to find his mother right away."

Shirley is made of pretty tough stuff herself. As soon as she's completely recovered—she has several broken bones—she hopes to return home. After all, the cows need tending.

TEAM EFFORT
Jackson, Tennessee—Union University varsity soccer player Josh Hanna was at home in his off-campus apartment when he heard what sounded like a freight train roaring by. Minutes later, the phone rang. "Union just got hit," his sister told him.

Hanna shot over to the stricken campus and spent an hour searching for survivors. Then he heard that a group of students—including his former roommates and some soccer players—were trapped in the rubble of the Watters Residential Complex, where he had lived the previous semester.

Emergency workers had arrived on the scene but couldn't get their heavy equipment into the collapsing building. The firefighters formed a bucket brigade, which Hanna and his teammates joined, passing slabs of cement, Sheetrock, and gravel away from the scene. "Some pieces took 15 guys to lift," Hanna says.

At 7:46 p.m., a siren wailed—another tornado might be on the way. Not one volunteer abandoned his place. Two men were eventually pulled out. A couple of hours later, one of Hanna's teammates was found, and then another. By 1:30 a.m., six students had been pulled out alive.

Although there were nine serious injuries on campus, there were no fatalities. "All I did," says Hanna, "was what I thought was right."