As volunteer's chainsaws dug into the pine tree that nearly flattened Star Edmondson's kitchen, she could breathe a sigh of relief.

"We've cried," she said as she looked at her mobile home just outside of Kenly. "Everything's out now."

The twister toppled the top of a pine tree and sent it crashing into the Edmondsons' kitchen.

"I was sleeping on the couch because my husband was going to go hunting the next morning and I said, ‘I'm not going to hear that alarm clock going off at 4:30," she said. "The whole trailer just started shifting all of a sudden. [I] took off running through the kitchen and went in there with my husband."

Their house was on the edge of a tornado that plotted a path of destruction in two Triangle-area counties. It destroyed or damaged 40 homes in Johnston County and 26 down the road in Wilson County. Gov. Mike Easley saw it all from an airplane during a tour of the areas Monday morning.

"The first thing that goes through your mind when you see the damage from aerial perspective is that you're amazed that there were no more injuries," he said in a news conference. "These homes were sporadically hit or miss, but when they were hit they were pretty much flattened."

The state is still trying to put a price tag on how much damage is left from the weekend storms.

"If we have enough damage, then we get SBA loans from the federal government," Easley said. "It does not look like we're going to have enough damage at this point. I'm going to wait and see before I say finally."

Jeff Orrock, Warning Coordinator for the National Weather Service in Raleigh, said altogether there were six twisters:

-Robeson County
-Sampson County, in the Clement Community
-Johnston County, in the Meadows Community
-Just east of Smithfield in Pine Level
-The EF-2 tornado in Kenly
-The EF-3 tornado near Elm City

"The system actually originated in upstate South Carolina and moved north into North Carolina," Orrock said. "The first storms that produced the first tornadoes in Sampson County - that was the first storm that became tornadic. That moved into southern Johnston County and that storm produced the tornado near Meadows."

"A second storm developed and that became the Pine Level tornado and the same storm that produced a tornado in Pine Level also produced the Kenly and the Elm City."

The twister was packing winds of 135 miles an hour in Kinly; 140 to 145 down the road in Elm City.

"The real large tornadoes that we've seen that have been really the fatal tornadoes - that was all produced by one storm that started, really, in the Pine Level community," Orrock said. "It had the same circulation, the same updraft. The tornado just seemed to kind of bounce the ground where it touched down briefly lifted back up."

Now, some victims of that deadly tornado are moving out of their homes. The Edmondsons' insurance agent totaled their home.

"We've got our bedroom suit," Star Edmondson said. "We've got some of our clothes and some of my what-nots were saved."

Related Links

1. Gov. Easley: 9 Homes Destroyed In Johnston, 7 In Wilson County