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TUSCALOOSA, ALA. - Angela Kelso and Clayton Smith got married Saturday and all the spoils of their wedding -- Tupperware, wine glasses, a fancy vacuum still in its box -- were packed in their rental home.

Kelso, 22, had been watching news of the coming storm all day Wednesday and was home from her graphic design job by 3:30 p.m. Her husband, 23, was just minutes away at his ROTC class on campus. But unless you know a tornado is imminent, what can you really do? Kelso played awhile in the yard with Allie, their pit bull mix. But soon it was apparent that something bad was headed her way.

"The power went out. There was no more TV," she said. "And I knew I was in trouble." Her father-in-law called and told her to get into a safe place with some pillows. So she went to the hallway with Allie.

Then her mother called. She told Kelso it was going to sound like a freight train passing right by her, that it would last just a moment.

She retreated to the tiny closet in the master bedroom, crouched low, with Allie in her arms. The closet was so small she couldn't close the door all the way, but she pulled it in as much as possible.

Then it came, the roaring train with the wailing whistle. She could feel things falling around her; the floorboards were ripping away.

"I prayed, 'Lord, keep me safe,'" she said. "I had my eyes closed and it felt like a dream."

When she lifted her face from the pillow and looked up, the closet door had swung open. She saw clouds and a blue canvas above her, the roof was gone; windows smashed out.

She jumped out of a low picture window liberated of glass.

"The best thing was seeing all of the people alive who were standing there," she said.

She called Smith. "I said, 'Baby, everything's gone. I can see the sky. I'm OK. Allie's OK. But I need you.'"

He walked for blocks through the mess -- trees fallen, the Chevron station twisted, the mattress store a filthy ruin.

Just walls, piles of bricks

The house was just walls and piles of brick, their belongings now junk. School textbooks and notebooks littered the floor. Everything was spattered with mud. For blocks it was the same.

They embraced and she told Smith, "Baby, go help the others." He was a military policeman in the Army Reserves; in 2009 he had been in Iraq.

The neighborhood was flooding with people and rescue workers. They would hear a shout and run toward it. Smith went a few houses down, where three men and a woman -- all of them young like him -- were lying in the rubble. One guy had a small cut. But the others were in worse shape. Smith and the impromptu crew were worried about the woman, that perhaps she had hurt her back. Someone found some plywood. They loaded her on it and took her to the parking lot of a Hardee's. Someone put her in a pickup truck and took her to the hospital.

The second of the three men had broken some ribs and both legs below his knees. The third man was dead.

After a while, they walked to a parking deck a few blocks away. For the first time, Kelso said, "I saw the city of Tuscaloosa, and as far as I could see -- left, right, and in front of me -- everything was gone."

They spent the night at a relative's house but were back just after dawn Thursday with a crew of friends, digging through the rubble. Smith knew it could have been worse.

'We'll be OK'

"Angela was shook up last night," he said. "But we got married on Saturday. I'm very lucky she wasn't hurt. Between God, family and friends, we'll be OK."

Near the broken magnolia tree, they made a pile of what was worth salvaging: some clothes, a bottle of Crown Royal, a case of beer. And what was left of the wedding gifts: the wine glasses, sheets and bowls, the fancy vacuum still in its box, the Tupperware.

The scene of devastation was repeated throughout Alabama.

In Pleasant Grove, a Birmingham suburb, Vicki Wood, 52, said, "This is just total devastation," as she picked through the rubble that had been her daughter's house.

"I've seen Katrina," she said. "I've seen an F-5 tornado. But this is different. This is the worst."

Sharon Blue, 57, a real estate appraiser, had saved herself by huddling in her laundry room. "I thought the whole house was just going to take off," she said. "It was like Dorothy in 'The Wizard of Oz.' I just held my little dogs and prayed."

'We're lucky -- we're alive'

John Walkingshaw, 64, a retired police officer, was standing by his shattered house, where he had lived for 36 years.

"It's going to end up being the worst tornado this state has seen," he said. Large chunks of the walls of the house were sitting in his yard. His red Lincoln sedan was half-buried under mud and debris.

"We're lucky -- we're alive," he said.

The New York Times contributed to this report.