The death toll remained at eight Friday, and a dozen people were hospitalized. Four children were in critical condition. About 100 people were displaced from their homes.

Grieving family members identified battered bodies. Survivors poked through debris piles for possessions. Some still could not believe what they had seen.

"I'm in a total daze," said Charles Faulk, who weathered the storm in his Holly Tree Road mobile home with his wife, Sheila. After the winds stopped, he ran outside and saw the bodies of two neighbors lying on someone else's front lawn.

Three friends who lived just down the road, a couple and their adult son, were blown from their mobile home and killed. Faulk was one of the first to find the woman's body, in woods nearby.

A National Weather Service tornado forensics team concluded that the tornado roared through Armour with winds of nearly 200 mph. It was an F-3, on a scale from 0 to 5, strong enough to rip roofs and walls from well-constructed houses, overturn trains and lift heavy cars. It traveled 1.8 miles, bouncing off the ground at points and sparing some structures. At its widest, it was 300 yards across.

Five homes were demolished, and 25 damaged, said Gov. Mike Easley, who flew over Armour on Friday and met with officials and emergency workers at nearby Riegelwood Community Center.

Damage, "thank goodness," wasn't widespread enough to qualify Columbus County as a federal disaster area, Easley said. But he declared a state disaster to help pay funeral and medical expenses. Easley also obtained a U.S. Small Business Administration disaster declaration that makes low-interest loans available for repairs.

Despite the chaos, many residents said Friday they intended to stay in Armour.

Janet Byrd, 45, picked over pieces of debris on her lawn. A ladder hung from a tree. Nearly every window of her family's four vehicles had been blown out. Same with the windows in her mobile home.

Byrd works two jobs, full time for the Columbus County Department of Aging and part-time for the Dollar General store. She and her fiance, Rodney Beatty, 40, planned to stay in a motel Friday night. Her 10-year-old daughter, Jana, was with an aunt, Byrd wants everyone reunited in Armour.

"We're gonna stay here," Beatty said defiantly, even if it meant delaying her wedding.

Around 10 a.m., 15 members of the Martinez family, shaken by loss of three from their clan, arrived at their mobile-home community not far away. Columbus County Sheriff's deputies and state and federal officials accompanied them.

One official carried a list of the dead and asked relatives to confirm the spellings. Family members searched for anything intact from two mobile homes.

Whenever they found photographs, they would lay each carefully on an overturned mattress, pointing out the faces of loved ones who died.

Five hours later, six of those photos rested by vases filled with red roses and sunflowers. They were on a table before the altar of Christo Rey Catholic Mission in Riegelwood.

They stood in for the dead at a hastily arranged Mass.