00:02Smoke rising from behind the rubble is a sign of hope in St. Louis.
00:07We came together, a couple people just saw us pulling up and they just started coming and bringing food and throwing it on the grill and helping.
00:12So everybody knows that as a community we come together.
00:14Marlon Whitfield organized one of many cookouts and barbecues happening across Missouri to help families who lost their homes and nearly everything they own.
00:24There's a lot of elderly people, again, some people didn't have insurance, so that's was all they had.
00:28So us being able to give back and just day by day make it a little bit better to deal with.
00:32I feel lucky, bless the Lord, that I'm still here.
00:35A lot of people didn't make it.
00:37Wayne Crawley's ceiling collapsed on top of him as the tornado carved a path of destruction through the west and north sides of St. Louis.
00:45I got the head injury, chest, my back.
00:49Neighbors say a few hundred feet was the difference between devastation and being spared.
00:55The people across the streets, you can see their steps, their bathroom, everything is freaking crazy.
00:59And I was like, how is it that out of all these houses on the block, my house is barely untouched.
01:05Like, the most damage we got is to the little side of the building, but everybody else is missing half of their homes.
01:11Their roof's gone, everything is crazy.
01:13Just a few blocks away, Gwen Hudgens' home was ripped apart by the 150-mile-an-hour winds in the tornado.
01:21Gwen and her son were thrown out of their home and landed in this yard.
01:26Somehow, they managed to survive and walked away with only bumps and bruises.
01:31I went to open up the door.
01:32The wind blew it back, knocked us on the floor.
01:35Everything came on us and pushed us through the wall out to the lot.
01:39I thought I was dying. I thought it was over with.
01:43Gwen and her son are now living in their car and tents.
01:47I'm sleeping on the lot, trying to protect the little that I got.
01:51And hopefully, somebody will come through and help us.
01:54It's going to be real expensive. It's a lot of damage.
01:59AccuWeather estimates the total damage and economic loss from the severe weather outbreak in the central U.S.
02:04is $9 billion to $11 billion.
02:08It's the fourth extreme weather disaster in America so far this year.
02:13Many tornado survivors are now relying on the kindness and generosity of volunteers, neighbors, and complete strangers to get by.
02:22I'm going to stay right here. I'm not going nowhere.
02:24I love my city, and I know they're going to come out for me.
02:27This is their home, right? It's typical to get up and leave after a tragedy.
02:30But when you have people like this that come together and want to be strong and help each other,
02:34then it makes sense and it makes you want to stay and be more resilient.
02:36In St. Louis, for AccuWeather, I'm Bill Waddell.
