Tornado Damage Scattered, Severe

Ken Keasbey empties the contents of his grill on what's left of his deck as he and other residents of his Chantilly neighborhood clean up. (Gerald Martineau -- The Washington Post)

In Maryland, about 30 properties in Cecil County and 40 in Frederick County were damaged, officials said.

The destruction seemed arbitrary -- one house flattened while the houses around it were untouched. In Chantilly's Pleasant Valley neighborhood, only two of several hundred homes were seriously damaged: those owned by the Hepler family and a next-door neighbor.

James Hepler said it took less than a minute for a funnel cloud to destroy his home. The wind blew off a large section of the second floor, which ended up lying on his driveway and neighbor's yard. Videotapes, sofa cushions and photographs were found several blocks away.

"One minute we were lying there, and the next thing I knew there was daylight coming into my basement," Hepler told National Weather Service and county officials yesterday.

Motorists near Dumfries and Hoadley roads outside Manassas saw a funnel-shaped cloud about 5:30 p.m., said Capt. Tim Taylor of Prince William County's Fire and Rescue Department. It headed northeast, touching down as if it were skipping in the neighborhoods of Woodbine Woods, Bel Forest West, Lake Jackson and Westchester, he said. There were no injuries directly attributed to the tornado, but by yesterday afternoon there were several reports of chain-saw injuries and trees falling on people during the cleanup, Taylor said.

Prince William officials warned about price gouging by unscrupulous contractors and said consumers should check with their insurance companies before they agree to large repair bills.

Maj. Paul Mercer of the Fauquier County Sheriff's Office said two dozen houses in Remington were damaged Friday night, some severely. Residents were evacuated last night because of fears of electrical damage, he said.

Jeanne Heaney of Remington weathered the storm in her basement with her two children. "We could see the debris flying from our house," she said. Although her house was not damaged, she said, she saw the tornado up the road where her friend Tammy Hall lives.

Hall's family, including her six young children, escaped injury and spent the night at Heaney's house. "They were just basically devastated," Heaney said.

She added that, for this storm at least, the stark news reports were not exaggerated. "They always try to make it sound bad," she said. "This time it really was."

Because of heavy rains to the west that accompanied the storm, the Potomac River is expected to swell three feet above its flood stage at Point of Rocks sometime this afternoon, said Rich Hitchens, a hydrologist with the National Weather Service. Flooding is predicted to be mild, he said.

In western Pennsylvania, downtown Pittsburgh's Point State Park was underwater yesterday where the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers join to form the Ohio. Dozens of boats that had broken free of their moorings were floating down the fast-rushing rivers. Williamsport, Pa., collected 6 1/2 inches of rain in 24 hours, and Pittsburgh got a record 5.95 inches Friday.

The National Weather Service predicted that the Ohio River would crest today at 46 feet, about 10 feet above flood stage and close to its record. By early afternoon yesterday, it was at 41.7 feet.

Across West Virginia, flooding and mudslides had blocked 207 roads and damaged hundreds of houses, authorities said.

Convoys of electrical trucks, relief agency mobile feeding stations and military vehicles carrying National Guard troops in fatigues streamed through the battered Southeast all day yesterday as the immensity of Hurricane Ivan's destructive path came into sharper, grimmer focus.

Alabama Gov. Bob Riley told reporters that he was "absolutely shocked at the devastation." Even as parts of storm-rattled Alabama and Florida began to return to some semblance of normality, there were still 1.3 million people in 13 states without power.

Staff writers Tara Bahrampour, Carol Morello, David Cho, Manny Fernandez and Manuel Roig-Franzia and the Associated Press contributed to this report. Fernandez reported from Florida and Roig-Franzia from Alabama.