Below is a story from the county of Monticello. They tell the story of what it is like to be struck by a tornado.

While most of the town remained without power and most businesses were closed, the mood was upbeat as residents expressed amazement that nobody was killed or seriously injured. "The tornado is an act of God," said Monticello Mayor Ron Ivall. "Nobody being hurt is another act of God. That has to be the second act of God in the same afternoon." Classes will resume today in the Monticello School District after electricity had been restored to all its schools by late Thursday. Illinois Power Co. officials all of its Monticello customers to have power by midnight Thursday. Throughout the town of 5,000 people, residents told stories of being caught by surprise by the tornado, yet escaping unharmed. "I've seen a lot of happy people hugging each other," said Police Chief John Miller, who had been on duty for more than 24 hours straight Thursday afternoon. "I've heard that all day: 'It's a miracle nobody got hurt.' I've heard that all over town." At Metamorphosis Montessori School, a private preschool and kindergarten on the north side, lights went out about 1:50 p.m. Wednesday. After the school's director, Chris Sanantonio, heard the warning siren, she grabbed the nine napping 2- and 3-year olds and pulled them into a rear hallway. Eighteen children were in the building, including Sanantonio's son, 6-year-old Sam. Ten seconds later, the tornado arrived. "The trees started coming down," said Sanantonio. "All of us had our ears popped. We felt like at any moment everybody would be blown away." She prayed "really hard" as five large trees crashed down around the school, denting a teacher's car, crushing playground equipment and tearing down the gutters. "I had about nine kids in my arms," she said. "I thought if we were blown away, at least we would all be blown away together." A quarter-mile away, registered nurse Darinda Ripper was caught in the midst of the tornado as she drove on Illinois 105 to her job at Kirby Ambulance Service. "There was a power pole swinging in the wind, debris everywhere flying around," said Ripper, who hit a tree that fell in her car's path. "The power pole was just flopping around. It was just hanging onto the lines. I thought it was going to fall on me." An ambulance traveling in front of her was lifted off the ground. "I think I know what Dorothy must have felt like," Ripper said, referring to the "Wizard of Oz." "It was debris and chaos all around me." Danny Blacker, an emergency medical technician at the ambulance service, drove to work from nearby White Heath after he heard the tornado had hit Monticello. As he drove out of a blinding rain onto the Interstate 72 overpass, he said his small pickup truck was lifted off the road. "The tornado picked up my truck and set it sideways on the overpass," Blacker said. He continued into town, but his progress was checked by downed trees. He met up with Ripper, driving with her across lawns and over branches to answer a call for a possible injured person caught beneath debris in an apartment building on the west side. The two emergency workers removed pieces of a demolished wall and insulation from the bed of Jennis Williams, a night-shift worker who normally sleeps during the day. "When I entered the bedroom, I could see the whole outside," Blacker said. They uncovered a row of pillows on her bed, one of which Blacker mistook for a woman's leg. They never found Williams. A half-hour later, Williams appeared at the disaster command center at Pizza Hut. She explained she was with her father -- who was visiting from Louisiana -- when the tornado hit. She had been at her job as an aide at a group home until 11:30 a.m. She would have gone home to take a nap, if not for her father's visit. "I'd have been a squished puppy," Williams said. Rescuers thought she was home because her car was parked out front. She was thankful people risked their lives to sift through her apartment. "I think Monticello has an extraordinary bunch of people who care for each other," she said. Patrick J. Keane, Region 7 coordinator for the Illinois Emergency Management Agency, said city, county and township officials have done an extraordinary job of responding to the crisis with the assistance of groups from neighboring communities. "The people in this community instantly came together," he said. "This is what we would hope would happen in every county and at every disaster." Keane is still assessing the damage, which will run into millions of dollars. He said two buildings were destroyed, four sustained major damage and 25 suffered minor damage. Brad Ketcham, meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Lincoln, said the twister was classified as a strong F1 (on a scale of 0 to 5, with 5 being the strongest), with speeds up to 110 mph. Ketcham said it originated at the golf course on the city's southwest side, heading northeast, touching down briefly to demolish a storage building, tear the roof off a church and hit a 12-unit apartment building and a farm implement business. It lifted entirely off the ground for a while but later "skipped along," dancing around hundreds of houses -- sometimes staying 20 or 40 feet above ground -- as it uprooted and sheared the tops off trees throughout its two-mile- long, quarter-mile-wide path to the northeast corner of Monticello. "That's why there wasn't any more structural damage," Ketcham said. There was plenty of damage to the electric delivery system, with about 26 poles and 30 spans of wire down. Debbie Albin, Illinois Power customer service manager, said the primary problem was damage sustained by a substation that delivers power to the entire city.