Survivor

In a grassy pasture strewn with toys, splintered lumber and bricks tossed by the tornado’s widespread wrath, 11-month old Kyson Stowell was lying face down in the mud, 150 yards from where his home once stood.

“It looked like a baby doll,” said David Harmon, a firefighter who had already combed the field once looking for survivors. Then he checked for a pulse. “He was laying there motionless … and he took a breath of air and started crying.”

The field had already been combed once for survivors, and finding anyone alive seemed improbable. Hours after the storm, there was devastation everywhere: The body of the boy’s mother was found in the same field . . . .