Fourteen-month-old Angel Babcock of New Pekin, Ind., was found after her family's mobile home was destroyed.
She had been in critical condition at Kosair Children's Hospital in Louisville, Ky. Chief nursing officer Cis Gruebbel said Sunday that her family decided to take her off life support.
Besides bringing death, the storms thrashed the conveniences of modern life, too: Cellphone signals were hard to find, e-mail was hard to come by, electricity indefinitely interrupted. People went back to basics or got creative to learn about their loved ones and begin rebuilding.
"It's horrible," said Jack Cleveland, 50, of Henryville, a Census Bureau worker. "It's things you take for granted that aren't there anymore."
In many cases, word of mouth is replacing the conversations that would usually happen by cellphone or e-mail.
At Sunday's Mass, the Rev. Steve Schaftlein turned the church into an information exchange, asking the 100 or so in attendance to stand up and share information. Immediately, volunteers stood to share tips about functioning in what is in many ways a tech-free zone.
Lisa Smith, who has been Henryville's postmaster for six weeks, told people that they could pick up their mail in Scottsburg, about 10 miles north. She said she was most worried about people needing medication. She has been shaking boxes to see if they had pills inside with hopes of connecting them to their recipients.
A local insurance agent, Lyn Murphy-Carter, shared another story. The founder of her agency, Tom Murphy, 84, had told her always to keep paper records. That proved valuable without access to computers. She collected about 1,000 claims Saturday alone, and was gathering handwritten claims from policyholders at church.
In West Liberty, Ky., about 85 miles east of Lexington, loss of technology led to a confusing and stressful aftermath for Doris Shuck, who was cleaning her house when the storm approached. She grabbed her laptop, cellphone, and iPod and put them in a tote bag to take to the basement. The storms took her home, leaving only the basement and front porch. Huge piles of debris and mattresses were strewn in the backyard.
"I could hear the glass and hear the wood breaking," she said. "I just thought the house is going to fall on top of me." She had scrapes and bruises.
After the storm passed, she received a text message from her mother, 70 miles away in Prestonsburg, but could not reply.
"I was just trying to figure out what had happened and get my thoughts together, and my phone beeped and I looked and it was from my mom. I couldn't answer it," Shuck said. She went to the hospital where she works, but there was no Internet access there, either.
She reunited with her husband and daughter at the hospital and left for Prestonsburg to let her mother know they were fine. But they did not know her parents were on their way to West Liberty at the same time.
Her parents asked a state fish and wildlife officer to go to their home. The officer eventually found Doris Shuck's name on a list at the hospital for people who were accounted for.
While it could be days before power and cell service are fully restored, crews were making progress Sunday. In Indiana, about 2,800 homes were without power, down from 8,000 in the hours after the storms.
