When they heard the sound of a train coming, Philip and Patricia Bruce started to run.
They’d been in their bedroom, about to turn in for the night, when the rumbling grew into a roar. They got up and scrambled toward the basement but made it just a few feet down the hall when shards of glass and debris began pelting them in the back. Taking cover in the next bedroom, they waited, hoping they’d make it through. « It was awful, » Philip, who is 69, said. « I got glass in my back, in my legs. But we’re safe. The Lord’s good. » Before their lives were upended by last week’s violent, long-track tornado, the Bruces lived in Dawson Springs, Kentucky. The home Philip had worked all his life for — where he and Patricia had lived for nearly two decades — was obliterated. Their humble neighborhood was reduced to rubble, along with three-quarters of this small city about 70 miles northeast of Mayfield, which also got slammed in the eight-state tornado outbreak. Worst of all, Philip’s sister-in-law Jennifer Bruce, who was recently widowed and lived alone on the other side of Dawson Springs, was killed, he said. She was one of 14 people killed by the tornado in Hopkins County, the coroner said Wednesday. Thirty-six people were still unaccounted for Wednesday in the county, most in the Dawson Springs area of about 2,500 residents, its emergency management spokesperson said. The Bruces know they’re lucky to be alive. But as they sort through the heap of rubble that is their home, some big questions loom: Do they stay and rebuild in this place that is now a shell of what it once was? Or do they pack up and leave behind the only home they’ve ever known? Such matters weigh, too, on emergency response teams still working to restore basic services and federal officials considering plans for long-term recovery: What will become of these small towns effectively wiped off the map? With their lives reduced to shreds in a matter of moments by the deadliest December tornado ever recorded in the United States, reality hasn’t fully set in for the Bruces. Their son, nephew and a family friend were at the house with them this Monday morning to help them salvage anything still left — a refrigerator, some clothes, a black-and-white photo of Philip as an infant with his mother. A few walls still stood and the Christmas trees look untouched, but the roof had been peeled away almost completely, while crumbled Sheetrock, bits of insulation and pieces of lumber were strewn across the property. « It’s hit me some, but it probably still hasn’t hit me like it will, » Philip said. As he recounts the past 72 hours or so, his voice starts to quaver. Corralling neighbors and searching in vain for others Just after the tornado passed and Philip and Patricia emerged from their home, they heard the cries. People all around them appeared trapped in the maze of debris that had become their houses. The couple rushed into the night to try to free who they could, bringing them over to shelter from the cold in their kitchen — one of the few sections of the Bruces’ house where the roof hadn’t entirely blown off or caved in. « All of this neighborhood come in here and got in the kitchen, » Philip says. « We’ve got a little bit of a roof back there. You could hear the Sheetrock everywhere else falling. They was cold, wet, scared to death. » They got to Gary Ashlock, who lived in a blue house across the street. They got to a household of three with one member in a wheelchair. They got to a family of five trapped in the basement. They looked in vain for a woman on their block. When they had rescued everyone they could, the Bruces headed out of their neighborhood to check on family members. Their oldest son, just a couple minutes down the road, had just one room left standing in his house. They made their way toward their sister-in-law’s house and found one of her neighbors parked at the edge of a road nearby. Jennifer, the neighbor said, was gone. Soon, they learned of the woman from their block: Her body had been found some distance away. Grateful — and worried — as the long recovery begins Three days later, as Philip, Patricia and their relatives sifted through the remnants of their house and loaded belongings into pickup trucks and vans, Gary’s son and daughter-in-law came by with an update.
