Baby found alive in Tennessee tornado field

In a grassy pasture strewn with toys, splintered lumber and bricks tossed by the tornado’s widespread wrath, 11-month old Kyson Stowell was lying face down in the mud, 150 meters from where his home once stood.

“It looked like a baby doll,” said David Harmon, a firefighter who had already combed the field once looking for survivors.

Then he checked for a pulse. “He was laying there motionless ... and he took a breath of air and started crying,” he said.

Finding anyone alive had seemed improbable. Hours after the storm, houses were wiped to concrete slabs and a brick post office was blown to bits. But except for a few scrapes, Kyson was fine.

But the boy’s mother was not so lucky; her body was found in the same field.

Kyson was later discharged from hospital and is being cared for by his grandparents.

At a makeshift shelter for storm victims at Hartsville Pike Church of Christ in nearby Gallatin, the Rev Doyle Farris said the child was a reminder that people “should never give up, even in the midst of the worst storm”.

“If you look, you can find an inspiration or a bright spot,” he said. “The child will always be a reminder in this community of that message.”

Kyson’s story emerged as a tale of hope amid spectacular misery as residents in Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas tried to piece their lives back together after the nation’s deadliest twister rampage in two decades killed 59 people.

The extent of the damage was still being tallied today.

Federal and state emergency teams dashed into the hardest-hit areas, along with utility workers and insurance claims representatives. President George Bush, who declared five Tennessee counties major disaster areas and ordered federal aid, will visit the state today.

Though homes were destroyed, communities flattened and loved ones lost, there were signs everywhere that recovery, while far away, was possible.

In Greenville, Kentucky, 18-year-old Samantha Oakley gave birth to a healthy boy in the dark soon after the storm knocked out power at Muhlenberg Community Hospital.

As the lights went out, doctors “hollered ’flashlights’, and nurses took off and got one,” the baby’s grandmother, Vicki Reed, said.

There were countless stories of people relieved to be alive. James Krueger, a 49-year-old electrician, opened the door to look out of the 100-year-old home he was restoring and the wind sucked the door from his hand. He dived on to the ground, the house was pulled out from under him – and when it was over, he was on bare ground.

“It was like God was holding my leg and beating the (expletive) out of me for everything I’ve done in my life,” said Mr Krueger, of Lafayette.

“Maybe I tried to question God too many times, but the bottom line is something kept me there.”

Charity efforts were beginning for those who lost their homes. A classroom inside the Pleasant Field Full Gospel Church building in Scottsville, Kentucky, was filled with bags of clothes and a nearby kitchen was stuffed with donated food, ready for residents displaced by the storm.

In Arkansas, 16 workers were in the middle of a tornado’s path when the storm hit the Rivertrail boat manufacturing plant. The workers were on the job late to get a shipment of boats on to a tractor-trailer. One died, but 15 survived. The big rig was still there today, part of a massive pile of twisted debris, all that remained of the plant.

“Look at all that. Can you believe 15 people walked out of there?” plant worker William Aderholt said.