Jeff Giachelli, 48, said he and his wife, Cappy, were asleep when the storm hit. He called to his wife when the windows of their red-brick home shattered. His roof also had been sheared off.

“We got in the closet and it just collapsed,” he said.

In a nearby neighborhood, several brick duplex apartments were smashed and cars were flipped upside down. Nearby, an American flag hung in a mobile home that was ripped apart.

Stephanie Malley, 35, cried as she looked at the shell of her home, its roof gone. She awoke when flying debris hit her in the back. She grabbed her 11- and 13-year-old sons and pulled them into a bathroom.

“We stayed in the bathroom for a long time until everything started coming down,” Malley said.

Her 11-year-old needed nine stitches for a cut on his leg. Nearby houses were marked with red spray paint to show that emergency workers who dug through the rubble didn’t find any injured or dead residents.