By Esteban Parra and Jon Offredo

The News Journal

The National Weather Service confirmed Friday that a powerful storm dropped a tornado in western Kent County on Thursday, damaging at least 15 homes and injuring two people in its path.

Joe Miketta, a meteorologist with the weather service in Mount Holly, New Jersey, said the tornado, inside a storm with damaging straight-line winds, touched down near Westville Road about 4:30 p.m. and lifted by the time it reached the intersection of Luther Marvel Drive and Darling Farm Road about two miles away.

"It was an EF-1 with winds of 100 to 105 mph maximum," Miketta said after inspecting the damage Friday, adding it was a fairly strong tornado for this part of the country.

Gov. Jack Markell toured the damage area Friday afternoon, making stops along Luther Marvel Drive and Tower Road east of Marydel. He walked along the property where one person was rescued Thursday under the wreckage of a trailer.

Keepsakes were scattered along the ground and a crystal cross stood upright atop a chunk of metal several yards from the collapsed structure.

Standing along the road in front of the demolished trailer, Markell said he had spoken to the 51-year-old husband and wife who were injured during the storm.

"I felt fortunate to be able to talk to both of them. They sounded okay," Markell said. "Obviously incredibly shaken up."

The husband said he was basically hanging on for dear life, Markell said.

"He said he flew through the air, he doesn't know how far he flew," Markell said. "He hit the ground really hard and that's really the last thing he remembers."

The storm came in so fast and left residents with such little warning it was incredible that the injuries weren't more serious, Markell said.

"When you see something like this you sort of wonder if not for the grace of God, what actually may have happened," he said.

The governor made several other stops along Tower Road, talking to residents like Michael Houdek. The storm severely damaged his house, ripping off the front wall of his first-floor master bedroom and damaging the back of the house. Part of the roof sat at the foot of his driveway and a blue tarp covered a hole where the master bedroom wall once stood.

Friends, family, neighbors and volunteers worked hard around the house clearing debris. A crew worked out back, dragging limbs off the top of Houdek's large storage barn.

Houdek said he built the one-story house with his father 27 years ago. They then built his fathers' house next door and several years later his sister moved next door to him. All three were damaged in the storm, but thankfully no one was home, he said.

The three families left for the beach Thursday morning. Houdek said he got a call yesterday afternoon from a neighbor after the storm rolled through.

"You don't hear of tornadoes touching down in Delaware. The odds of our three family houses getting hit and skipping everything else miles away is just," he said trailing off as he stood in the master bedroom.

Sunlight crept in from the outside as Houdek stood in the room. At one point the wind outside whipped up the tarp, exposing the bedroom to the street.

Houdek kept a good sense of humor when asked about the damage.

"We were going for the open-air look," he laughed. "It's either laugh or cry."

Earlier Friday, Chris Ford related how he was mowing the lawn Thursday afternoon at his Luther Marvel Drive home when he noticed the storm coming. Ford figured the storm would pass him and head to Dover.

But when it started to rain and drizzle, Ford headed inside the house and turned on the TV.

"I turned on the Weather Channel, just to get an idea of the radar and see where the storm was headed and how much time I had," he said, adding the weatherman told people to take cover because there were indications of a tornado.

Ford was startled when he saw the radar was over his area. With little time left, he said he ran outside, removed some access boards from his deck to his crawl space and headed in for safety.

"As I got underneath the house into the crawl space I hear trees crashing around me," he said, staring next to a tree that landed on his deck.

Ford said it was "howling and blowing and white outside. You couldn't see 10 feet."

After about 45 seconds alone in the dark crawl space, Ford got out to see the downed trees. This included one across the street in his neighbor's home where the tree uprooted, lifting the deck.

Ford joined another neighbor as they began checking on others in the development of less than 10 homes.

"We accounted for everybody until we got down to the end and near the end of the road there is a small mobile home and you could see that the mobile home was just literally destroyed," he said. "All of our focus and attention was on the residents in there."

Ford said they found the woman, who'd been feeding the animals in a shed.

"She was OK and that's what really protected her, because the trailer had blown apart and piled around the feed shed," he said.

Another neighbor who arrived before them could hear the male resident trapped under the home's rubble.

"We knew he was alive because we could hear him taking to us," Ford said.

Ronald Killen, 68, pointed at rubble where the mobile home had stood before the storm Thursday.

"It was picking my neighbors' trailer up, but it was spiraling like a football," he said. "And the roof tore off of it and then it landed."

Seeing their vehicles near the house, Killen said he knew they were home and rushed over.

He said he was about 50 feet from the trailer, when he saw the woman coming out from under rubble "screaming and cry" for her husband.

"We couldn't get any response. I figured he was gone," he said, adding the neighbor had been recovering from a recent broken leg.

"I was looking in one spot, she was looking in another and then he coughed. She found him," he said.

Killen said a mattress had landed on his neighbor. But on top of that was a filing cabinet, a bureau and debris.

Killen said he managed to free him but told him to stay put because of possible injuries, adding the man was badly cut.

"His face was full of glass. It was literally sticking right out of his face," he said.

Killen held the man's hand and talked to him in order to calm him too. The conversation was mostly about "anything to distract him," Killen said.

Hartly firefighters and other emergency crews arrived shortly afterward and got the neighbor out.

Colin Faulkner, director of public safety for Kent County, said in an email Friday: "We estimate approximately 15 homes with various levels of damage. We do not have totals for accessory buildings at this time."

"So far ... two have been condemned, however, there are three additional homes with serious damage as well," he said.

The storm damage near Luther Marvel Drive seemed to be contained to about a quarter-mile area. This included a destroyed mobile home, uprooted and snapped trees as well as other debris.

News Journal reporter Jonathan Starkey contributed to this story. Contact Esteban Parra at 324-2299,

eparra@delawareonline.com or Twitter @eparra3.