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BLOUNTSTOWN - He cannot forget the way she screamed, standing there in the darkness, surrounded by cotton fields and dairy farms and freshly demolished pine trees.
"My husband is buried under there!"
The terror in her voice revealed more than the words.
Keith Parrish, 37, sifted through the rubble of the mobile home as the rain fell hard. He and others helped pull the woman's husband from the wreckage. He was shaken, battered - and alive.
Four people along Parrish Lake Road did not make it. They were killed Wednesday night when a tornado spawned by Hurricane Ivan ripped through the pines just north of this hamlet in rural Calhoun County, leaving in its wake twisted trees, shattered homes and a heavy dose of grief.
It was not supposed to happen here, more than 150 miles east of where Ivan made landfall and a world away from the beach communities that seemed most vulnerable to fatalities.
Instead, death found its way down a quiet dirt road, near a quiet town in a quiet inland community.
James and Mary Marshall were scheduled to start their overnight shifts at 11 p.m. at Calhoun Correctional Institution, the town's largest employer, where they had spent a third of their lives working.
He was a 15-year prison veteran, five days from his 42nd birthday. He supervised officers in the low-security work camp next to the higher security prison. She had been there a dozen years and oversaw officers in the main prison.
They never made the shift. The tornado hit their mobile home about 9:30 p.m., killing husband and wife.
It demolished a mobile home nearby, killing Melvin Terry, 55, and his 35-year-old daughter Donna. Neighbors said several family members who took shelter in the same home suffered injuries but survived.
Witnesses said the destruction to the cluster of mobile homes was so bad, it looked like several of them had vanished.
Said Keith Parrish: "I don't think there was a nail that you could salvage over there."
The tornado that passed through Blountstown carved an unmistakable path, like a bulldozer several hundred yards wide mowing down everything in its way.
It sent everything flying, boats, horse trailers and furniture. It mangled trees and power lines and turned wood sheds into splinters. Animals disappeared.
It brought panic even before it arrived.
Parrish, a mechanic and lifelong Blountstown resident, was watching the local news when the weatherman said a tornado was headed straight in his direction.
"I told my wife and kid to get in the truck," he said.
Within minutes, Parrish evacuated his yellow doublewide home off State Road 69 and packed his GMC with his wife, Lori, his 16-year-old daughter, Kayla, and the family's bulldogs, Gator and Sugar.
With spooked dogs and a frantic wife, Parrish drove underneath the bridge at nearby Stafford Creek. Debris pounded the truck. Their ears popped.
"I was terrified," said Lori, 44.
Across the street, 56-year-old Wannie Abbott and his son Robbie, 37, had lost power. But they heard the same tornado warning come across their battery-powered radio. Father and son huddled in a hallway bathroom.
"We heard it coming," Abbott said. "It was that loud roaring. You couldn't mistake it."
It hit.
"You could hear trees flying and breaking," he said. "Then the roof came off. You could hear it ripping off and flying back over the house."
As best anyone can remember, the tornado lasted a couple of minutes. The fear lasted all night.
With first light, Keith Parrish could see the ruins of his house.
It had shifted 3 feet off its foundation. Most of the siding had peeled away. Water saturated the floors and walls, and pieces of the ceiling were falling.
"Kayla's playhouse is out there somewhere," Lori Parrish said, looking out the front door.
The family will stay with friends or family, of which they have plenty.
Across the street, Wannie Abbott lost his carport. The parts of his roof that didn't blow away had become unhinged and ineffective. He worried about water damage.
But all he had to do, all anyone had to do, was think about what happened a couple of dirt streets away on Parrish Lake Road.
Gratefulness trumps anxiety.
"We were spared," Abbott said. "I feel extremely lucky."
Parrish paced around Thursday afternoon wet, tired, unshaven and unsure of what comes next. And he told jokes and smiled. A thankful smile.
"I ain't sweatin' nothing. My family made it," he said, staring out over the pines toward the place where four people didn't make it.
He looked at the shell of his home.
"This is boards and nails," he said. "This don't mean anything."
- Times staff writer Curtis Krueger contributed to this report, which used information from the Associated Press.