Another Storm

Nate Miller and Donovan Henderson: The outside world doesn't exist in this place.

It's crumpled, scrapped and torn. It's still. Quiet reaches out from each vacant house, the only sounds those of helicopters thumping overhead and a solitary gate squeaking in the breeze, the rest of the fenceline gone.

The cul-de-sacs smell of churned-up dust, everything splattered with mud. Shredded two-by-fours and asphalt shingles mingle with naked Cabbage Patch dolls and strollers.

The faces, whispers and laughter that normally would give this neighborhood up and down Cornerstone Drive a pulse are absent. Each home is marked with a spray-painted circle with an X inside of it, leftover from search and rescue teams that scrambled through here Thursday afternoon, indicating that no bodies were found inside.

Friday afternoon, regular police patrols and a few men in hard hats provided the only activity in the areas of Windsor hardest hit by Thursday's tornado, areas still offlimits to the people who live here.

But the recovery has begun. In Windsor, as in Gilcrest, Platteville, Milliken and west Greeley, people began picking up the pieces Friday.