Daylight shows the extent of destruction left behind by an EF-3 tornado early Tuesday in Brunswick County

OCEAN ISLE BEACH, NC (WWAY) — The tornado that struck portion of Brunswick County Tuesday morning left a path of destruction through the woods and into the Ocean Ridge Plantation.

A press conference discussing the aftermath was held this afternoon.

“We lost three of our residents,” Brunswick chairman Randy Thompson said. “We want to remember them in our thoughts and prayers, along with those who were injured in this event.”

The tornado destroyed several homes and businesses, leaving behind damage Thompson described as unprecedented for the area.

“I’ve had the opportunity to go into the area,” Thompson continued. “I’ve seen devastation that I have not seen in many years, having a public safety background myself. It truly, truly was a disaster last night.”

Although there was a tragic loss of life, emergency services director Edward Conrow says everyone has now been accounted for.

“We are going to transition into a recovery phase, where we’re going to start doing a preliminary damage assessment,” Conrow said. “We’re working with our utility partners, and working with our state and local agencies to kind of get our community back to normal as possible.”

Conrow says that although the recovery process is underway, the area still has a lengthy road ahead.

“This is definitely going to be a long term event,” Conrow continued. “The recovery in Ocean Ridge and Old Shallotte Road area, the impacted areas. This is going to take a lot of hard work and effort between clean up, rebuilding and getting the families back to a normal state of life.”

The National Weather Service spent time in the area Tuesday surveying the path the tornado left behind. Steven Pfaff with the National Weather Service in Wilmington says tornadoes are harder to prepare for than other natural disasters such as hurricanes.

“With hurricanes, which we unfortunately have to deal with a lot with too, you might have three, four, five days to prepare,” Pfaff said. “With a tornado, it might only be a matter of minutes.”

That was the case with the deadly tornado that impacted parts of Brunswick County early Tuesday morning, devastating houses and businesses with very little warning.

The tornado killed three people and left ten others with injuries. Steven Pfaff says the survey is an important part in enhancing future warnings to make events like these happen less often.

“What we want to do is come out and determine, a or b, was it a microburst, was it a tornado,” Pfaff added. “In this case we can confirm it was a tornado. From that we determine the max width of damage, the peak wind speed or what relates to the enhanced Fujita scale, and also the path length.”

The National Weather Service’s preliminary determination is that this tornado was an EF-E, with 160 mile per hour winds. That makes it a devastating tornado that changed lives in the blink of an eye.