in. it s amazing to see the swath of this destruction of the tornado that the national weather service is looking into as perhaps an efl for or even a rare efl five meaning 200 miles an hour. wind that can actually pick up well-made structures and crush them like they are toys, trees, completely blown over, people s houses destroyed off the foundations, vehicles stacked on each other. this is a town, this morning on this afternoon, where people are out. you can hear generators and chain saws beginning but the reality is just a setting in. i ve spoken to many people here. they are devastated, mostly concerned about the well-being of their neighbors and friends and family and those that unfortunately have lost the lives here in kentucky. there is a ton of work to do. this will take months if not years to rebuild. these towns here in western kentucky on the border of southern
this town will be able to come back. just devastating. no town no more. reporter: when you go down the street really, you hear one story after another like that, people who have been through near life or death experiences and coming back to see what s left appeared we have the fox drown over some of the destruction from the sky. what s different about this tornado is the path it took not only 200 miles long, but three quarters of a mile wide, so instead of the traditional narrow focused path of a tornado, this one just completely wiped out this whole downtown area leaving really people stunned. one positive sign we are hearing is the sound of chainsaws as a lot of religious groups coming from ohio working on this street just dropped what they were doing to come help complete strangers and try to get the trees off of their
seeing. take a look. we have found numerous homes, dozens if not hundreds of homes here in kingston springs alone that have been severely damaged by the storm. a miracle here, they say, is that no deaths occurred. the church was a refuge for storm victims. neighbors telling me that within minutes they started to hear chain saws and you can hear in the distance right now tennessee volunteers getting to work trying to help neighbors. when you talk about the widespread power outages affecting hundreds of thousands, not only in tennessee, but also in kentucky, that s because major tennessee valley authority transmission lines have been taken out by the storm. look at video hear from henry county tennessee right on the tennessee kentucky line. one of the major tv towers came crashing down under the force of the storm. that s going to be a difficult restoration. they are sending in crews right now and have been working around the clock to restore that major line, again affecting hundreds of
stuff. but then you walk outside and look around, and he said earlier today, until you stand here and look at it, it s hard to process, and he was right. when i pulled into town, i m still shocked by what i saw. reporter: yeah, it is like a scene out of a war movie. you can t believe this is what happened in your own hometown, your own home state, for me paz a kentuckian. it is surprising to me just to see the resilience of some people. they said they lost their home but they still had smiles on their face. it s incredible. i saw people today that had their chain saws out and they were getting stuff out of their house. they were moving forward. they were trying to figure out how to move forward with the circumstances they had been handed. right behind where my dad lives, and i think i saw it on drone footage as well, there was an apartment complex, and it s hard to look at that and wonder if there were people in there, what happened to them when that thing
they were. reporter: i m no sorry. yeah. i was ducked down in that hallway through that doorway right there. reporter: about what time? 9:30 when it hit. i was in the dining room doing something. the lights went out, and i heard it coming. and i jumped in the hallway, ducked down. my ears started popping, and then it hit. the walls on the other side are all blown out. and i stayed there at night, too. reporter: i must say i ve done this for a very long time, and that man literally brought me to tears this afternoon. i m telling you, everywhere you look you re going to see destruction. you can probably hear in the background all the chain saws that are going just to stop some of these limbs from causing any more damage around here. also, take a look at just this one house beside us.