ARMOUR - An early morning tornado killed eight people in Columbus County on Thursday, pulverizing a mobile home park, crushing brick houses and scattering cars and bodies like tossed dice.

The twister ripped a path half a mile wide near this crossroads community about 20 miles west of Wilmington, sending 19 people to hospitals. Two of the eight dead were children. A 3-year-old girl was rushed to UNC Hospitals in Chapel Hill, where she remained in critical condition Thursday night.

It was the second-deadliest tornado in state history. Names of the victims were not available Thursday night.

The damage was so severe that sections of a mobile home lay flattened with a section of its roof on the ground, its vent pipe still poking from the shingles. The home's innards were strewn on the ground as if the home had exploded. An electronic Santa Claus was face down in the mud near a workbench. In the middle, from an unknown child's home, sat a stuffed Big Bird doll.

"There's no time for a warning in a tornado," Columbus County Sheriff Chris Batten said. "It is a major catastrophe. It really tears at your heart."

Thursday's tornado was the first to hit the state since a twister touched down in nearby Pender County in 2004, killing three. In 1984, a major tornado hit Red Springs in Robeson County and spun through eight others, killing 42 and injuring 623.

Thursday's storm system also injured at least six in Iredell County.

"We've not been fortunate, but it's certainly not as bad as it was in '84," Gov. Mike Easley said.

It was bad enough.

Armour and nearby Riegelwood sit in a low, flat area surrounded by cotton fields and punctuated by low-slung buildings and scrub pines.

The tornado tore through that plain at 6:37 a.m., only about eight minutes after the sheriff's office received the warning, howling past before residents had gotten out of bed.

Batten said the area has no tornado sirens, so residents would have learned of the twister with their own eyes and ears. It generated gusts powerful enough to lift victims from the ground.

"We had cars in the woods upside down, two propped up against the front of a house," said Bob High, a photographer with The News Reporter in Whiteville who was there at 7 a.m.

Neighbors beat ambulances to the scene, arriving to find dead victims covered with blankets, or in ditches. Survivors returned from work to find their homes vanished or smashed.

Nector Diaz, 23, met his friend Daniel Martinez shortly after Martinez survived the twister, and heard him tell of losing his wife as she left home before dawn with her daughter on their morning trip to the baby sitter.

"She flew," Diaz said. "The thing picked her up and took her all the way to the pond."

The tornado left N.C. 87, a main highway through the region, blocked with debris and downed trees. Easley said it could take days to clear.

By midday Thursday, 30 families had moved into a shelter at nearby Acme-Delco Elementary School, where many had escaped with only the muddy and rain-soaked clothes on their backs.

Tomeka Jenkins, 29, waited there with three children until an emergency worker produced a set of wrinkled photographs recovered from her demolished mobile home -- all portraits of her and her children.

"My babies," she said. "God is good."

Easley activated the State Emergency Response Team on Thursday and sent two squads of state troopers to help Columbus County. He urged citizens to mind weather reports and said damage assessment would begin today. Based on those findings, Easley will decide whether to declare a state disaster area or request a federal disaster declaration.

Emergency medical services crews combed through homes searching for trapped victims, said Patty McQuillan of the state Highway Patrol. Riegelwood Baptist Church was taking donated clothes, as was the federal credit union there. Thanksgiving food drives quickly turned to tornado relief drives in town.

"There are volunteers showing up who are actually getting in the way," McQuillan said. "Columbus County has asked volunteers not to show up unless they are asked."

High, the news photographer, said the scene was unlike anything he has witnessed in a 54-year career.

"It was like if you hadn't said your prayers," he said.

It looked, he said, as though nobody had seen it coming.

(Mark Johnson is a staff writer for The Charlotte Observer.)