BLENCOE, Iowa — Just before the tornado hit, the Boy Scouts were gathering on the porch of a shelter, playing cards and waiting out what many of them thought was just a pelting rain. In a matter of moments, a scout leader, hearing a faint tornado siren, hurried them inside, and then, as he stared out the open door and saw the twister in the distance, ordered them to dive under tables, survivors said.

The door, still open, tore off and vanished. The ceiling flapped open on one side, then the other, and then caved in. The walls began disappearing. The pickup truck parked out front flew into the air. The stone chimney collapsed, crushing some boys.

The tornado killed four boys and injured 48 others Wednesday night at a remote camp where nearly 100 boys from Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota had gathered for a leadership-training week known as Pahuk Pride.

“I was just laying there in the fetal position, my hands over my head, trying to imagine that I wasn’t really there, that this wasn’t really happening, that it was a dream,” said Cody VanZuiden, 13.

Some told of a deafening howl that ended after eight seconds, leaving behind a chaotic scene for which no drills, indeed nothing, could have prepared them: screaming, howling boys buried beneath rubble, wood and stones; a desperate search to get help when it turned out that the ranger’s home, too, had blown away; and rescue teams struggling with bulldozers, tractors and chain saws to get into the camp on unpaved roads where enormous trees had fallen all around.

“When I got up,” Cody said, “there was a boy right in front of me, face down, in a pool of blood. I had never seen that before.”

Through it all, though, survivors and their families said, there were moments of surprising strength: scouts who held makeshift tourniquets (their Scout shirts, mainly) on those who were bleeding while they waited for rescue crews; a scout who gave mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a gravely wounded boy, and another who did chest compressions on a second boy; scouts who began digging out rocks with their hands to uncover the buried.

“It’s the scouts that saved a lot of lives,” said Ed Osius, chief of the volunteer fire department in Blencoe, a town of about 200, not far from the Little Sioux Scout Ranch, with its rugged, heavily wooded terrain, trails and valleys spread over 1,800 acres. “The scouts did exactly what they were trained to do. This was the real thing.”

Despite having another scout, then a table, land on top of him during the brunt of the storm, Taylor Willoughby, 13, was among those who got up and began following his leaders’ instructions to head out into the debris in search of a phone. “It was 20 minutes before anyone could find a working phone, but even after that, I’m told that Taylor and others were doing first aid,” said Charleen Willoughby, Taylor’s mother. Taylor was later hospitalized while doctors conducted tests on his spine after finding a large gash on his back.

The long wait

After the tornado hit, after 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, parents from three states found themselves in a desperate waiting game that stretched on, in many cases, for hours. Some saw reports of the twister on television and began driving toward the camp, only to be forced to turn back because of reports of more tornadoes, flooding and other ominous weather along their routes. Others said they arrived at the camp not long after the storm struck, but did not learn until nearly midnight whether their children were alive.

“The hardest thing was just sitting there and not knowing,” said Chris Karschner, who raced from her home in Omaha and then waited, she said, for many painful hours to be reunited with her son Ben, 14. “They just couldn’t get the children out of there, through all the trees and rubble, and they couldn’t tell us anything.”

For the parents of four boys, ages 13 and 14, the news, when it did come, was no relief. In Omaha on Thursday night, hundreds gathered, many of them in scout uniforms, for a somber candlelight vigil to remember the four — Aaron Eilerts, of Eagle Grove, Iowa, and Josh Fennen, Sam Thomsen and Ben Petrzilka, all of Omaha — all of whom had been selected as leaders in their local troop and, as such, been invited to attend the special weeklong training.

Sam’s pastor, the Rev. Jim White, of the Southwest Church of Christ, described him as a sweet child with an infectious smile. Ben’s principal, Kayleen Wallace of Mary Our Queen Catholic School, recalled him as a dependable, honest boy — never a showoff. One of the four will be buried in his scouting uniform, Boy Scout officials said, another with the scouting emblem on his casket. Among officials and the survivors, eight of whom were still hospitalized on Thursday night, there remained confusion about how much warning had been given before the tornado struck. Many of the boys said they knew nothing of it until their leader said he heard a siren — some of them said they heard it, too, though others did not — just before the tornado touched down.

The National Weather Service in Omaha, which handles the region, issued a tornado warning at 6:23 p.m. (Central time), and a severe thunderstorm warning earlier than that, when a large cold front began moving through. The tornado touched down at about 6:35 p.m., local officials said.

Lloyd Roitstein, a scouting official in the Midwest, said that camp leaders had plenty of warning and provided all the needed notice: scouting leaders in an administration building on the grounds had a weather radio, and set off a siren at that building before the tornado arrived; he could not provide specific times.

The 93 boys and about 25 staff members did exactly as they should have, Roitstein said, noting that the group had held emergency training for such an event a day earlier. The group split into two, and headed for two shelters that sit in a low valley. Neither of the shelters in the camp, owned since 1970 by the Scouts, had basements. One shelter survived; one, to the north, was destroyed.

“You have to understand, there’s not much that would have survived this tornado,” Roitstein said. “The entire valley was like it was put through a blender.”

‘I want to live’

As the scouts headed into the northern building, they said they recalled their leaders suddenly shushing them, saying they might have heard sirens.

“That’s when I saw the tornado in the distance,” said Ben Karschner, 14, who said he flung himself under a table and grabbed the table leg. Windows smashed. Dust flew. The distinct odor of dirt and water filled his nose, Ben said.

“I just kept thinking, I want to live,” he recalled. “It felt like an hour and a half, like forever.”

Hal Emas, 14, said he, too, had grabbed a table post, but the table blew away.

“There was a post on the outside of the troop shelter that held up the wall, but the wall was gone,” Hal said, adding later, “I held onto that for 10 or 20 seconds, I don’t remember how long.”

Other scouts said they prayed. One recorded a goodbye message on his camera. Another said he could not think, could not hear, he could see only a bright, white light — a tumble of debris and rushing air.

Scout officials say someone was able to call for emergency help on a cell phone near the administration building immediately, though some scouts apparently did not know that. And it took far longer, rescue workers said, to clear a first path for ambulances to deal with an array of injuries — broken ankles, skull fractures, broken ribs.

Charles Bowerman, 16, remembered diving under a table, watching chairs fly. Then the force of the tornado pushed him across the concrete floor, passed where a wall once stood, and out on to the grass.

“I was going to the Lord’s side, and I was going to go there flying,” recalled Charles, who was wearing a splint on his wrist. “It felt like I was about to be lifted up. I just hugged the ground as much as I could.”