As the tornado touched down, the young couple sprinted for the basement.

Windows exploded. Framed pictures jumped off the walls and shattered. A terrifying sucking sound enveloped their Mt. Juliet house as part of the roof blew off.

Tyler Manivong, 26, and his wife, Sabrina, 24, made it downstairs with their German shepherd, Stitch. But they freaked out when they realized their lab mix Lilo remained upstairs.

Then, it was all over in just a few minutes.

The couple found Lilo, unharmed, right away. They also found a lot of damage to the roof and extensive water damage in the home.

But their comfy new couch remained untouched. They were uninjured. And they realized immediately those nearby had been hit far worse than they had.

"We looked outside, looked at each other and said, 'We gotta go!'" Tyler Manivong said.

Manivong, an off-duty Nashville police officer, turned on his police radio, grabbed his flashlight and set off to check on his neighbors.

Within minutes, he and his wife found themselves sprinting again. They heard on the radio that an elderly couple down the street was trapped in their basement with piles of rubble on top of them.

BY THE NUMBERS:Tennessee hit by deadly tornado before dawn Tuesday

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Manivong and another nearby off-duty Metro police officer joined with a Wilson County reserve deputy and two first responders to spend the next 50 minutes digging the couple out with their bare hands.

The elderly couple, Bill and Shirley Wallace — who'd made peace with the idea that they probably were going to die — emerged from a 3-foot hole in their basement with just cuts and bruises.

The Wallaces and several first responders are saying Manivong and his fellow off-duty officer, Nate Larson, are heroes.

"That feels good," Manivong said. "But it doesn't deserve acknowledgment. It should be second nature."

'It was ... calming laying there together'

The Wallaces got a phone call from their son Billy on Monday night just after bedtime: Tornado's coming, get down to the basement.

OK, no big deal, Bill Wallace thought. We'll head down there in our sleep clothes, watch the basement TV for a while, and head back upstairs after the storm blows over.

A minute later, winds howled and the basement went black when the power cut out. A loud roar enveloped them: "I can vouch — it sounds like a train," he said.

Glass broke, boards cracked and a cabinet fell on top of them, knocking them onto the floor within a few inches of each other.

"It was kind of calming laying there together," Bill Wallace said.

The roaring ended in 60 seconds.

Shirley Wallace stayed on the floor in a ball while her husband crawled around, found a flashlight and saw that they were trapped, with only about 3 feet left over their head and no way out.

A water pipe burst, soaking Shirley Wallace. A broken gas pipe hissed, filling the room with an acrid smell.

"Well," Bill Wallace said softly to his wife, "we're gonna have to wait till someone gets us."

A giant game of Jenga

Jacob Austin, 42, recently elected Wilson County constable — a reserve officer of sorts — headed to the West Wilson Middle School after the tornado hit.

Inside, a woman told him there was a couple — her neighbors — trapped a half mile away in their basement at in the 1400 block of Barrett Drive.

When he got to the home with a Mt. Juliet police officer in tow, Austin saw a house that had mostly collapsed into the basement.

There was no structural integrity, a major gas leak and broken water lines.

"Is there anybody in there?" he shouted, never expecting an answer.

"I didn’t think someone would be alive with the condition of that house," he said.

Austin heard a faint, calm voice: "We're in here."

Austin's heart started to beat faster.

By then, the two off-duty Metro police officers and another neighbor had arrived.

Manivong and Larson took turns battering cinder blocks and bricks however they could, digging away debris while Larson kept chatting, soothing, calming and joking with the Wallaces.

When Manivong made eye contact with the couple, he said, "I'm Tyler. I'm one of your neighbors, and I didn't want to meet like this."

Several first responders arrived during the dig.

Still, during those long 50 minutes, wood creaked and glass broke, and everyone was afraid the settling debris would crash through the basement ceiling.

"It was like a huge game of Jenga," Manivong said.

Bill Wallace said he wondered if he and his wife would survive, but remained calm. "There was a higher being than us with us the whole time," he said.

When the hole was big enough, Larson crawled in and bear hugged Shirley Wallace and gently pulled her out while her husband followed.

After sitting on some stone steps, Shirley Wallace began to sob. Larson put a hand on her back and told her everything was all right.

"And she latched onto my neck and wouldn’t let go," Larson said.

Bill Wallace teared up the next day while thinking about off-duty police officers digging him out of danger. "They're our heroes," he said.

His son, Billy Wallace, also got emotional when thinking about his parents' rescuers, when realizing one of them left his tornado-damaged house to help his neighbors.

"It's a little overwhelming," he said.

"To be thinking of others at that time is kind of unfathomable."

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Reach Brad Schmitt at brad@tennessean.com or 615-259-8384 or on Twitter @bradschmitt.