It only took a split second for the tornado to reduce my house to a pile of rubble, and I felt I was immensely lucky to have survived.

I was watching TV with my wife when the tornado, with winds of up to 125 km/h, started battering the house.

At first I thought it was just another rainstorm, but then I sensed danger when the winds started to break the window.

I shouted to my wife to lie down. We crawled into a small corner between our bed and the wall of our house.

Soon the tornado wreaked havoc and reduced the house to pieces.

When I stood up from the rubble I found the world a mess: trees and electric poles cut down and a total power outage.

On Friday evening, one day after the tornado struck, I could only watch on as rescuers used bulldozers to search through the rubble and help me find whatever was left unscathed from the disaster: some clothes, quilts, sheets and three electric bikes that are now barely usable.

Everything else is gone, even my cell phone.

There were seven people in the village who lost their lives in the disaster, including my neighbor: a woman in her 70s and the grandmother of a three-year-old girl.

I pulled the girl alive from the debris after the tornado passed. But her grandmother was lost.

The disaster is so random and so unpredictable that a village just several kilometers away suffered only minor damage.

Most of those who died or were injured in the disaster are either elderly people or children, as most of the young people have left the village to find work in urban areas.

I have always worked away from home. This year I decided to stay at home to find work. I could never imagine that I would ever encounter this.

Liu Yangyang spoke with Xu Wei