JOPLIN, Mo. — The eerie wail of warning sirens filled the warm, humid air at 5:20 p.m. on Sunday, May 22, the day of Joplin High School's graduation.

Soon the sky faded from bright blue to green-gray, then to black, signaling a sense of imminent disaster.

At 5:41 p.m. a monster tornado — described by a meteorologist as "a fist coming out of the sky" — shattered the nervous calm that had enveloped Joplin, slowly crawling across the landscape at 20 mph with deadly force.

For 20 minutes the twister chewed up one-third of this city of 50,000 like a giant dinosaur gone mad, obliterating homes, apartment buildings, businesses, churches, schools and one of the community's two hospitals.

The estimated toll: 8,000 structures, 300 businesses, 4,000 jobs, 1,150 injured and at least 142 lives lost.

It was a cataclysmic day when the unthinkable happened.

Those who survived remember what they were doing when the tornado struck. Here are their stories, mile-by-mile, along the path of destruction.

Mile One

The tornado first hit near West 32nd Street and Central City Road on the south side of the city.

It was here also that it claimed one of its first victims.

Will Norton, 18, was sucked through the roof of his father's Hummer SUV as they drove home from his high school graduation ceremony.

He was found dead in a nearby pond.Will's father was hospitalized with lacerations and a broken arm, an injury family members say was caused by his desperate effort to hold on to his son.

Family friend Steve Lea watched as rescuers searched the debris-choked pond for the younger Norton.

“They were so close (to home),” said Lea, a former firefighter. “Five seconds would have made so much difference, maybe even three seconds.”

Mile Two

Becky Burris was slicing strawberries in the kitchen at St. Paul’s United Methodist Church, unaware of the approaching storm. She ducked down when the church began to shake. The tornado ripped off much of the roof and tore away an entire wall, but Burris escaped its wrath without a scratch.

Mile Three

Larry Eller and his wife, Chris, rode out the storm in their basement, hiding under the wooden staircase.

“We got down and then everything hit,” said Eller. said. “We knew we were in trouble when we looked up through the floor and saw lightning.”

Their home was destroyed, but they found a box of valuables in the rubble. It did not include what Larry wanted most.

“I’d like to find my passport,” Larry said. “I want to go to Europe.”

Mile Four

The Joplin Elks Lodge took a direct hit, splintering into a thousand pieces. Four bodies were recovered from the ruins.

Kevin Keys, the head trustee, said the victims took refuge in the lodge as the winds whipped into a frenzy.

The lodge was scheduled to hold its weekly bingo game that night. If the tornado had struck then, 50 people might have been inside, said Keys.

“Our whole lodge room was lost,” he said. "(But) we'll be back. We'll regroup. We've got over 500 members."

Mile Five

Rance Junge sifted through the remains of the Pronto Pharmacy last week.

Rance Junge was working at the Pronto Pharmacy. He was unable to see the tornado because the pharmacy did not have windows facing west.

“It t didn’t look threatening on this (east) side,” Junge said. “When I opened up the back door, I saw a wall and heard a huge noise, so I knew it was coming.”

Junge’s first instinct was to take shelter at nearby St. John’s Medical Center, but the tornado was on top of him.

So Junge and a co-worker ran to the front of the store to make their escape only to observe a motorist trying to outrun the tornado.

“I could tell he was terrified,” said Junge. “He didn’t have time to get in and we didn't have time to get out. The door pulled out of my hand and I knew we weren’t going to make it across the street.”

They took refuge in the store’s bathroom. The pair held onto plumbing to keep from being swept away.

“The building lifted, exploded, it did everything,” said Junge. “We were in the eye of the thing for a while because it calmed down and I thought, ‘Oh gosh, we made it.’ We could see daylight and there wasn’t a lot of building left, but then we got hit by the back side of it and that was when I got hit with debris in the back. I couldn’t protect my back and my head, and I got clubbed by stuff.”

He tilted his head slightly forward to display dark purple bruises that protruded from the collar of his shirt.

The terrified motorist was no where to be seen.

“I don’t think he made it," said Junge. "I think he went up in it."

The nearby St. John’s Regional Medical Center, one of the biggest buildings in Joplin at nine stories, was also in the direct path of the tornado as it tore into its fifth mile of destruction. The main structure shifted four inches off its foundation, making it unusable at a time it was needed most.

Five patients in intensive care and one visitor lost thier lives. The other 178 patients and the hospital staff survived by huddling in the interior hallways.

Sandy Conlee came out of her house immediately after the storm hit and saw a resident from the Greenbriar Nursing Home wandering about.

“One of the little old men from the nursing home was standing in the middle of the street when we came out of the house,” Conlee said. “He had blood all over his head. He was in shock.”

Conlee said her brother and two sons joined in the search for survivors.

They were shocked by the carnage that greeted them.

“There were bodies and broken bones and blood and stuff.”

Ten bodies were removed from the nursing home rubble after the storm, and two days later a rescue dog identified the location of a possible 11th victim. An excavator was needed to remove a minivan that had crashed through the roof of one room.

Kent Gilbreth took shelter in the corner of his father’s basement as the tornado plowed through the neighborhood.

“It sounded like a huge train,” he said. “I saw a black wall and got down to the basement just before it hit. I felt the suction and thought (I was) getting sucked out for a second. I got glass stuck everywhere.”

As the father and son loaded what few possessions they could salvage into the bed of a truck, Gilbreth was unsure of their next move.

“We’ll just take it one day at a time,” he said.

A few blocks east sits Joplin High School. It was demolished beyond recognition. As were four other schools, bringing superintendent C.J. Huff to near tears.

Destruction to the school district was estimated at $100 million, and Huff worried about what he called "the Katrina effect" of families moving away from Joplin.

“The big question is how many kids we’re going to have coming back this fall,” he said.

Mile Six

Jennifer and Danny Moore and their two children felt lucky to be alive. Their house was leveled.

Moore and his daughter were returning from a trip to the Home Depot when the tornado sirens sounded for the second time.

“It was just pitch black and there was debris flying, but I didn’t know what it was because this is the first tornado I’ve lived through,” he said.

But his wife knew danger was closing in.

“My husband and daughter were just pulling up in the drive and I looked over and saw it and had enough time to grab (the kids) and throw them in the bathtub and we laid down on top of them,” saud Mrs. Moore. “And then it started sucking us up and we just gripped the tub and held on and we thought we were through it because it calmed and you looked up and saw clear and the next thing you know, you saw it coming again. Danny was getting ready to get up and I said, ‘No, we’ve got to lay back down because that’s the eye of it.’”

Buried under debris, the family was freed by a neighbor. They then joined the effort to free others.

Jennifer was unsure whether the family would be willing to return to their neighborhood.

The nearby Home Depot was no match for the full fury of the tornado's winds, now up to 200 miles per hour.

Seven people were killed when the store collapsed.

After getting the call Sunday evening, the rescue team was on the road within an hour.

They arrived in Joplin after midnight and went to work at 3 a.m.

After searching for nearly 15 hours, the exhausted team was forced to rest. According to team leader Doug Westhoff, the Joplin tornado is one of the worst disasters the unit has seen.

“This is a devastating event,” said Doug Westhoff, head of a cleanup crew. “We’ve been to the World Trade Center, Hurricane Katrina twice, and Hurricane Ike. This is a significant weather event. This is Mother Nature telling us who’s in charge.”