Victoria Byerly-Zuck was one of thousands of people who were made homeless by a tornado that swept Mayfield

Wingo, Kentucky—she was sobbing when she came to the shelter. Her house was gone, along with everything inside. On the phone, Victoria Byerly-Zuck begged her neighbor to find something she couldn't bear to lose in the wreckage.

It was a plexiglass box, about the size of a medicine cabinet, and contained the relics of her baby son who died four years ago: his ashes, his photo, and the first and only piece of clothing he wore.

The 35-year-old young man was surrounded by others around this temporary shelter, and they lost everything when a deadly tornado tore through their small town Mayfield. Their city center was demolished. Hundreds of houses were razed to the ground. They lost their cars, wallets, clothes, Christmas gifts, all furniture, photos, and priceless heirlooms.

More than 100 survivors are here, in a church in the nearby town of Wengo with a population of 600. The church opened within a few hours of the tornado, and now no one knows how long it must remain open. An 82-year-old homeless widow asked the volunteer how long she could stay, and they told her as long as she needed it.

Byerly-Zuck's 3-year-old son spent a day trying to climb any car that entered or exited the shelter.

"He wants to go home," she said. He has autism and cannot speak. She didn't know how to make him understand that they were gone.

When the storm hit, they lived alone in a rented house in downtown Mayfield. She piled the pillows in the bathtub and put him on top. When the window burst, she picked up her son's necessities: a bag of diapers, some wet wipes, some clothes, a gallon of milk. She didn't expect that those hurriedly selected items would be all they had left.

She returned to the bathroom and closed the door, when a tree was uprooted and fell into the house, only a few steps away from where they were hiding. She climbed to the edge of the bathtub, trying to balance her body to protect her son, instead of pressing him under her.

She prayed to God to save him: "Please let us through the storm. I don't care about anything else. Everything else can be replaced, but he is irreplaceable."

She had buried a baby before, and the only thing she could think of was that she couldn't do it anymore. In 2017, she became pregnant, learned that she was pregnant with a boy, and named her. The next day, her amniotic fluid broke and the doctor could not save him. He was born prematurely at 22 weeks and his lungs were not developed. He took a breath and died before long. She lives at that moment every day.

"I can't go through it anymore. I really can't. I just gave birth to a son now," she said.

He was lying in the bathtub when the storm passed, and she realized they were trapped. The fallen tree and debris blocked the bathroom door. Weeping and suffocating, she couldn't call for help. She smashed a hole in the dry wall, then turned on and off the flashlight to indicate that someone was inside. The National Guard came and dug them out.

That morning, she wrapped up her son's last Christmas present—the gift she bought for him worth $300. When they fled their destroyed home, the only things left were the bathroom and another room they had been to-all these gifts were under the rubble.

Later that night, a neighbor called her and told her that the rest of the house had collapsed, and she begged them to find the box containing the baby's ashes.

Now they are surrounded by rows of cribs and strangers. They played together on the pool table in the corner, which was set up by the church for the children who are now homeless. There are people in their 80s and 90s, babies, dogs, including a little guy named Ding Dong.

On Monday afternoon, volunteers scrambled to set up more cribs because they hoped to absorb more than 40 people from other shelters within a few hours after the storm. They never planned or equipped for people to stay. But he didn't want to shut anyone out.

A healthcare company towed a trailer into the parking lot. They are struggling to find outdoor shower facilities and laundry carts because they worry that this may be the only long-term solution for many displaced people. Volunteers are running around. "I have two underwears," one of them said. "Do we have socks?"

Byerly-Zuck's son is accustomed to a routine: go to bed at 8 o'clock in the evening and take a nap in the afternoon. But it is difficult for him to fall asleep. She couldn't let him take a nap, and she couldn't let him sleep in the crib they shared until after midnight on Sunday. She worries about how all these uncertainties affect him.

He is very close to his grandfather, who is recovering in a hospital in Nashville after his home collapsed. Their neighbor is dead. Other people they knew in the nearby apartment disappeared.

"I need treatment after this; we all need treatment," she said, because here they exchanged the horror stories of their survivors and the stories of people they knew who hadn't experienced them.

She answered many questions about their future in the same way: "I don't know." She was desperate and sad-she didn't even have a driver's license anymore-but she tried to pretend that she was not afraid so that her son would not be afraid.

"He is everything to me," she said. "We lost everything."

She guessed that they would spend Christmas in the shelter.

The only thing she can think of is prayer.

As a blessing, she said: On Sunday night, a neighbor called and said that they had found a box containing her baby's ashes in the rubble, which was intact.

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