ENGLISH NYT1114FtornadoF Tornado Took Tennessee Boy 'for a Ride,' and Put Family in Hospital By DAVID M. HALBFINGER MOSSY GROVE, Tenn., Nov. 12 EStunned and weary, survivors of the tornadoes that tore a 1,000-mile swath of the country sifted through the shards of 36 lost lives and hundreds of homes today. Quentin Woody, 11, who was sucked from the shower in his mobile home and blown 300 yards away stark naked, tiptoed through a mud-soaked field here that was smeared with his family's belongings as his mother lay in a hospital with a broken back. He found his 13-year-old sister Sarah's camera. She had broken her arm. His father was in the hospital, too, with badly injured shoulders. But Quentin, somehow, only needed a few stitches, which he was only too eager to show the television photographers who kept asking. "I don't know what I thought," he said, describing the deafening howl that came just before he lost his towel, his footing, and then his consciousness. "I guess I thought, we're going for a ride." He pointed to a "brown spot" where the ride had begun: that was where his home had stood. The trailer's floor wound up across Highway 27, a half-mile away, beyond the tree where Quentin's younger brother's red book bag could be seen shimmering gently in the branches of a denuded tree. As Quentin scuffed his new sneakers on the detritus of the only home he had ever known, a squadron of civil air patrolmen pitched in, stacking clothes in one pile, wood in another, metal in another; anything remotely worth saving was gently placed in Quentin's aunt's pickup. Across what was left of this tiny hamlet and others like it, family members, neighbors and total strangers did the same at hundreds of households turned junk heaps. Tennessee arguably endured the worst of the storm front that swept up from Louisiana late Sunday and early Monday, setting off at least 88 tornadoes all the way from Arkansas to Pennsylvania, with wind gusts as powerful as 200 miles per hour, the National Weather Service said. In Tennessee alone, more than 150 homes were destroyed and 1,200 damaged in 25 out of 95 counties, 16 people were killed, and 95 were injured, state emergency-management officials said. The damage seemed evenly spread from west to east Tennessee, officials said, but seven residents were killed here in Morgan County, 41 houses and 15 mobile homes destroyed or rendered uninhabitable. What little good news there was today came early, when officials here reported that 39 people who remained missing late Monday had turned up. Only one person remained unaccounted for, but officials said they believed that was a mistake, and the search and rescue teams were sent home today after making their fourth pass through the area. By late afternoon, however, as temperatures dropped and traffic snarled, troopers shut the highways down again to allow utility crews to sink new electric poles and get the power on. But the traffic jams made it only that much more difficult to get heavy, debris-removing equipment into the area, said Bob Swabe, regional director of the state emergency management agency. Mr. Swabe said he expected a federal disaster declaration by the end of the week, which would release much-needed relief money and reimbursements to the struggling county government. Only 20,000 people live in Morgan, many of them guards at the Brushy Mountain state prison, and the per capita income is less than $13,000. Mossy Grove, 40 miles west of Knoxville, is so small that it is not even on the Tennessee road map. If it had been, the tornadoes that came hollering down from over Lone Mountain and across the aptly named Bitter Creek could well have erased it. As it is, the twisters gouged a half-mile-wide path about five miles long, from here clear across the hills into Joyner and Petros, officials say, before finally spinning to a halt, practically at the front door to the penitentiary. Today, the path the tornadoes took was a surreal study in contrasting sights, sounds and smells: up in the hills, the leaves on the trees rustled in the clean mountain air, ablaze in red and gold; from the roadside, wet, wind-hewn branches and uprooted tree stumps crackled and smoked in growing bonfires as workers busied themselves with chain saws. Continued 1 | 2 | Next>> Tornado Took Tennessee Boy 'for a Ride,' and Put Family in Hospital (Page 2 of 2) In Joyner, members of the Leopper family from as far away as Duluth, Ga., converged on what had been their ancestral home. The family matriarch, Vinalene Leopper, was killed a month shy of her 94th birthday. Her son, Henry, and his wife, Faye, were badly injured. Henry's son Bryan, 45, whose muscular dystrophy had just forced him to quit as the county finance director, was also killed. Neighbors who were able to take shelter before the storm hit came running when they emerged, but it was too late: the Leoppers had not been able to find a safe hiding place. "There was a basement, but they couldn't have gotten Bryan or my grandmother into the basement," said Loretta Marlow, a niece of Henry Leopper's. The basement now is all that remains; ; everything above the foundation has either fallen into it or is gone, strewn as far as a stand of pine trees a rifle-shot away. The lone remaining occupant of the house is Devon, the family cat, who moved about in the rubble, but out of training, or fidelity, or just plain bewilderment, refused to leave the premises. "He won't come out even to eat," Ms. Marlow said. No one expects the Leoppers to rebuild, relatives said. They were merely sorting through the rubble and scavenging for clothes for Henry and Faye, who will probably move in with relatives up the road when they get of the hospital, relatives said. Nature had always been good to her family, said Gail Leary, another niece of Henry Leopper's. As a child she romped in her grandfather's apple orchard outside his window, and relatives still farm the land as far as the eye can see, she said. Nature had given residents of Morgan County a sense of security, too, officials said. The mountains that ring the county, part of the Cumberland Plateau, which cuts clear across the state, between Nashville and Knoxville, were thought to provide a shield against such high winds. Tommy Kilby, the county executive, said he and a committee had been working for a year on a disaster preparation plan but never gave a moment's thought to the danger posed by tornadoes. "If you live in Morgan County, Tenn., and they're telling you a tornado's coming EI've lived here 38 years Eyou don't really expect a tornado to come," he said. For that reason, Mr. Kilby said, there was no warning system. "We may look at the possibility of a siren horn in our county now," he said. <