DAWSON SPRINGS, Ky. — When the tornado sirens began rattling this town of 2,500 residents on Friday night, Assistant Police Chief Lance Nosbusch locked himself in the concrete jail cell at the police station.

He figured that was all he needed to avoid feeling the tornado as it began plowing into the town at 10:37 p.m.

But even in the cell, Nosbusch could “feel the walls pulsing and vibrating” as a monster tornado roared just north of the station, destroying about 75 percent of the houses in one of western Kentucky's most impoverished communities — a place that takes pride in being the hometown of former governor Steve Beshear, the father of Gov. Andy Beshear (D).

Nosbusch jumped into his police car after the tornado passed, but he only made it a quarter-mile before the debris-filled streets became impassable.

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Then he opened the car door.

“You could just hear people crying for help,” Nosbusch said in an interview on Sunday. “So we just started running through debris, listening, and we started carrying people down to the main highway to try to get them medical help.”

But for nearly four hours, Dawson Springs was largely on its own, even as the cries for help continued.

The roads into Dawson Springs were so full of debris that the first ambulance from a neighboring community didn’t get through until about 2 a.m., Police Chief Mike Opalek said. By that time, Dawson Springs police officers, firefighters and residents had ferried about 100 people to a gymnasium, where they tried to triage those who were suffering from broken bones, bruises and deep gashes after being struck by flying debris.

“Some people were carried up to the school by front-end loaders,” Nosbusch said.

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Many people were saved Friday night and Saturday, but Dawson Springs is now focused on who the town lost, and how to dig out of the staggering piles of neighborhood rubble.

Although national attention has focused on the devastation in Mayfield, about 70 miles west of Dawson Springs, some residents here think the tornado was actually more powerful when it swept over them.

While survivors often say tornadoes sound like freight trains, Dawson Springs residents said what they heard was more like a lawn mower gliding over tree stumps.

The wind chewed up brick houses and duplexes, including much of the city’s stock of subsidized apartments, and caused some trailers and vehicles to tumble the length of a city block. Especially on the north side of town, the destruction was so vast that some residents had trouble finding the spots where friends’ and relatives’ houses once stood.

By Sunday afternoon, 12 Dawson Springs residents were confirmed to have died in the storm, according to coroner Dennis Mayfield. But when a reporter asked Mayfield if he expected the death toll to increase, he responded, “Oh, God, yes.”

“We did preliminary searches looking for the injured, but now we’ve got to go through the rubble,” Nosbusch said. “There are still so many missing, I fear there are still more for us to find, when we bring in the heavy equipment.”

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As search teams with cadaver dogs worked in the rubble on Sunday, the grief and sadness was everywhere here, as residents started considering the funerals ahead while also debating whether this community will ever be able to recover.

The median household income in Dawson Springs is just $25,000 annually. Nearly one-third of the residents live in poverty, double the statewide average, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Many people who lost their homes said they didn’t have renters insurance.

Tammy Coble, 55, spent Sunday digging through the ruins of her father’s service station. Coble’s 86-year-old father, Ernie Aiken, was killed by the tornado when it picked up the trailer he was in and tossed it across the street. Aiken’s body was found a half-block away, next to his favorite bar at the American Legion club.

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“You have a lot of elderly here, and you have a lot of government housing, and there is just not a lot of people with money here,” said Coble. “These people don’t have money to just go hire somebody to come do repairing to all of their homes. They are going to have to wait for government or insurance companies, and that is going to take a long time.”

But Coble and her sister-in-law, Lisa Aiken, said they remain optimistic that the town’s connection to Beshear will mean that Dawson Springs “is not forgotten.”

Steve Beshear, who served as Kentucky governor from 2007 to 2015, attended high school in Dawson Springs, and his extended family has been involved in commerce here.

“I’m emotional after two days,” the current governor said at a Sunday briefing, his voice cracking. “Dawson’s a place where I’d go and I’d sit on my grandparents’ front porch.”

Beshear grew up spending Christmas in the small western Kentucky community and attended the annual barbecue festival. His grandparents’ old house survived the tornado, he said, but the adjacent blocks are “just gone, just flattened.”

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“You stand in the midst of this and everything you see — everything right, left, forward, backward — is gone,” Beshear said.

The family name is still associated with Dawson Springs’ main funeral home as well as a man-made lake, Lake Beshear. A sign noting that Steve Beshear was born here is also affixed on a town gazebo as well as on highway signs.

“I think with the governor's love for this town, he will do his best to get the funding and other things we need,” said Coble, adding that she knew seven of the people among the dead so far. “It’s going to take a lot to get people back up on their feet because they won’t be able to do it out of their own pockets.”

Residents here do have some hope beyond action from the governor.

They note that some key pillars of the town — the post office, the municipal building, the fire and police station, and the school that serves prekindergarten through 12th grade — escaped the tornado relatively unscathed. And residents are relying on the generosity of neighbors: Amish families who live nearby cooked 1,000 meals for residents and first responders on Sunday.

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But the tornado gutted the town’s health clinic, and most of the city does not have running water, cellphone service or electricity.

And all across Dawson Springs, residents are focused on salvaging whatever they can because they are fearful that they won’t be able to put their lives back together.

Destiny Cartledge, 23, who is eight months pregnant, moved into the Clarksdale Court apartments three months ago with daughters ages 1 and 3.

A hostess at a restaurant where she earns $10 an hour, Cartledge paid $371 a month for her government-subsidized three-bedroom apartment.

When the sirens went off Friday night, Cartledge initially ignored them. But a minute or so before the tornado struck, Cartledge said her instincts told her to grab her 1-year-old from the crib and crouch over her children in the hallway,

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“And then stuff started just falling all over me,” Cartledge said.

With the roof and walls caved in, Cartledge found herself trapped at the back of her apartment, in the dark.

Although her children remained relatively calm, Cartledge started hearing the pleas of her neighbors’ children, who were trapped in the rubble and crying out that they had broken bones.

“All over the neighborhood, you heard people screaming and babies crying and, as a mother, that is the most terrifying thing you can hear,” Cartledge said. “So then I just started yelling, ‘I am pregnant! I need help!’ ”

An off-duty police officer and her uncle, who lived nearby, rescued the family. Cartledge suffered some cuts and bruises, but her children were uninjured.

As she picked through her belongings on Sunday, Cartledge was relieved to find some wrapped Christmas presents, one of which she allowed her 3-year-old to open on the street.

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“We do live in low-income housing, and I was really depressed. ... I lost my birth certificate, my marriage license, my driver’s license and my car, but I did find some diapers and Christmas gifts,” Cartledge said. “But there is no doubt about it. People are going to need to help.”

For now, Cartledge feels lucky that a town resort, where she works at the restaurant, has allowed her to sleep there this weekend. And in this tightknit community, Cartledge knows that her relatives will be there for her, at least helping when they can.

But Cartledge’s father, Jerry Trover, said his brother, mother and three nieces also lost their homes in the tornado. Now, Trover must figure out how to help his family on his $14-an-hour job at a sawmill.

“I’m just going to have to get work tomorrow, and try to be there for each of you,” Trover said, apologizing to Cartledge for not finding more of the Christmas presents.

A few blocks away, Bryan Williams is also wondering how he will move after he and several of his relatives lost their homes.

“It’s everybody’s story here,” Williams said as he stood near the concrete slab where his uncle’s house had been. “We are all in it together. ... Everybody knows everyone here, and everyone wants to help everyone, but you got to help yourself, too.

“And you can’t give somebody something to lean on when there is nothing, and right now there is nothing,” said Williams, a 28-year-old father of three.

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