BEAUREGARD, Ala. — When Taylor Thornton’s father finally found her Sunday afternoon, lying in the wreckage of her best friend’s home, he told his wife that it looked like she was sleeping.

Taylor, 10, had been away for the weekend and was at the mobile home of her friend’s father when weather forecasters and emergency officials began blasting out increasingly urgent alerts about tornadoes in the area.

A warning was issued at 1:58 p.m., and within eight or nine minutes, winds of about 170 miles per hour were pulverizing houses, hurling cars into the air and clear-cutting trees. Taylor’s father rushed to the mobile home on Lee Road 38 in Beauregard — the epicenter of the destruction — and came upon a sheriff’s deputy standing guard and a field of destruction all around him.

The tornado ripped a mile-wide gash through the heart of this rural community in eastern Alabama, killing at least 23 people in the deadliest tornado to hit the United States in six years, including three children and several members of some families. Dozens of others were injured, and the authorities said Monday that an untold number still had not been accounted for.