In the rubble of Dawson Springs, a question: ‘How do you start all over from this?’

Near the corner of School and Pine streets in tiny Dawson Springs, Laura Croft sifted through the remains of her step-mother’s home on Monday. She found family members’ clothes and shoes. She tried to wipe dirt and debris from old family photos she’d pulled from the wreckage, wondering out loud if she could get them restored.

Marsha Hall and Carol Gresham, Croft’s step-mother and her step-mother’s sister, were found dead over the weekend, buried under piles of debris.

The tornado had blown them away from the hall closet which they’d sheltered in. That closet was gone, as was the rest of the house. Neighbors nearby sheltered in a bathroom in the center of their home to survive the storm, Croft said. On Monday, the center of that home was the only thing still standing.

A large part of Dawson Springs, a city with fewer than 3,000 residents in Hopkins County, still looked as if it had been dismantled on Monday.

The reportedly 200-mile long tornado took apart homes, overturned cars, uprooted trees and left local residents without basic utilities. It also killed more than a dozen people here, with the number of deaths expected to rise in the coming days, according to local officials.

The record-long tornado caused at least enough damage to be categorized as an EF-3, indicating that there were wind speeds greater than 135 miles per hour, according to the National Weather Service. Experts are still surveying the damaged regions and the assessment may get worse.

Hall and Gresham’s home was far from the only one in the neighborhood to be flattened, reduced to a pile of wood, glass and belongings. Clothes, furniture and children’s toys lie scattered among the rubble which previously was their neighborhood. The hill which their house sat on overlooked more devastation below.

Other families dug through the remains of destroyed homes too, with the help of emergency responders nearby. Another resident in the neighborhood said his family sheltered in a basement and had to be dug out of it after the storm. His truck had been pushed across the street, and plates from the family’s kitchen were found in the truck cab.

Croft said she and other family members showed up Friday night but couldn’t search because it wasn’t safe. It was still storming, and they could hear gas lines hissing. They came back first thing Saturday morning.

The family had been in that house for 40 years. Hall and Gresham lived together after Croft’s father had died. Neighbors found the sisters’ bodies next to each other.

“One would not have wanted to go without the other,” Croft said.

Croft, who lives in Princeton, who spent a lot of time with family in Dawson Springs, said the city is full of tightknit families.

Her family was thankful to have the closure of finding their dead loved ones.

“We were so scared we weren’t going to find them because (the tornado) had been on the ground for so long,” Croft said.

The family plans to continue digging through the debris to recover as much as they can. After that? “I don’t know,” Croft said. She said the family didn’t plan to rebuild a home on the lot.

“How do you start all over from this?”

Thirteen dead in Dawson Springs. More to be confirmed

Thirteen people from Dawson Springs had been confirmed dead Monday morning, according to the Hopkins County coroner’s office. Those who died were between the ages of 34 and 86.

Deputy Coroner Jeff Mayfield said he had a “bad feeling” that number would increase in the coming days. Injured victims died at hospitals after being rescued from the storms, and those numbers hadn’t been added to the death toll yet, he said.

Mayfield said there hadn’t been any confirmed deaths from other parts of the county.

“The most widespread damage is for folks here in Dawson Springs,” he said outside the city’s municipal building Monday.

Jenny Bruce, a Dawson Springs Independent School Board member, was among those who died, according to the Kentucky School Boards Association.

Mayfield said he wasn’t certain how many people were still unaccounted for. Gov. Andy Beshear previously said on NBC’s Meet the Press that the unaccounted for people in Dawson Springs filled up several single-space pages. Beshear’s family is from Dawson Springs.

‘Going through a moment that’s not going to last’

In downtown Dawson Springs Monday, trailers full of clothes, water, food, plywood, tools and other supplies were being unloaded as donors from all over the Eastern U.S. brought items to those in need.

Brad Shuck, pastor at Redemption City Church, was working with a nearby church out of Providence to field the donations and provide food, water and supplies to people in the city.

Donations were being loaded into side-by-side off-road vehicles and taken into Dawson Springs neighborhoods where they were most needed.

Shuck said they’d received donations from other areas of Kentucky, plus Florida, New York, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Indiana and Ohio. Shuck said he’s now hoping to get more building supplies donated.

“If somebody’s got old tools they’re not using, whatever it is, that’s what we’re trying to move into,” he said.

Using generators, the church has been able to get electricity back and is providing access to the heated building, Shuck said.

As National Guard members flanked the city’s entryways to limit traffic in the area, utility trucks lined Dawson Springs’ main road while workers tried to repair the damage done. Firefighters, emergency management officials and other first responders filled the city’s neighborhoods, digging through debris.

Shuck said the “very special people” in Dawson Springs “are going through a moment that’s not going to last.”

“We’re coming back,” he said. “We are down but we are not out.”

This story was originally published December 13, 2021 at 3:57 PM.