Updated 4:10 p.m. Thursday

CHAPMAN — Standing in the middle of Sheeran Street, Joleen Gorman could hear an incessant beeping drifting out of the mountain of debris before her.

“That’s my fire alarm, still going off," she said matter-of-factly. It was now Thursday afternoon and she had just returned, in daylight, to see what she survived 15 hours earlier.

“My bedroom is the room to the right of the front door,” she said, pointing.

The house is largely obscured by limbs, debris, shattered construction materials. “I was sleeping. I never heard the sirens.”

Some residents said the sirens sounded twice before the immense tornado tore into Chapman around 10:20 p.m. Wednesday.

“It blew once and I went back to sleep,” said Brent Fielder, who lives in the south part of Chapman. The second blast roused him again, and this time he jumped in his car and raced to his parents’ house, because he doesn’t have a basement.

Gorman said she was awakened by the sound of windows rattling.

“I thought we were having a hail storm,” she said. Then she heard the infamous freight train sound.

“I dove for the hallway,” she said. “As soon as I got there, all the windows blew out.”

For Gorman, the loss is compounded by the fact that her husband, Raymond, is deployed in Iraq. She has broken the news that their home has been destroyed.

“They’re in the process of trying to get him home,” she said.

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By mid-afternoon Thursday, some residents were being allowed back into the city to check on their homes. The scene was every bit as surreal as a war zone — the air was thick with the smell of insulation and asphalt and wood, trees that have been ripped from the ground, trees that are shattered, trees that are nothing but leafless stubs, furniture spilling out of houses because the walls have been peeled away.

An endless stream of vehicles was converging on the city throughout the day; most were being turned away by soldiers guarding the entrances. Some wanted to check on their own homes. Some wanted to check on friends or relatives. Some just wanted to help.

Ty Lemon, Abilene, pulled up at the checkpoint on the west side of Chapman, less than 100 yards from the ruins of the high school, which took a direct hit from the tornado. He popped the trunk and started horsing 200 pounds of ice into a vehicle that was being allowed into the city.

His wife, Brenda, is the school district’s librarian, he explained.

“Just something to get them by,” he said simply.

Similar gestures of kindness were evident all around. Entrance to Chapman from the north was being blocked at Steve’s County Corner, a convenience store located just south of Interstate Highway 70. The parking lot was overflowing with people waiting to get in.

Matt Becker pulled up to the store front and left a large box of glazed doughnuts on the newspaper vending machines. He’s not from Chapman; he’s with PowerCat Electric in Manhattan. But he’s not in Chapman for a job; he’s just trying to raise morale.

“We took them to all the cops and firemen in Manhattan,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”