CHAPMAN ? Residents of this central Kansas town sorted through the debris Thursday after a deadly tornado roared through the heart of their community and evoked memories of a larger killer storm last year in far away Greensburg.

The twister that touched down Wednesday night in Chapman cut a path six blocks wide through much of the town, leaving one woman dead, reducing some houses and businesses to rubble, snapping utility poles and downing trees.

Elsewhere in Kansas, tornadoes caused extensive damage at Kansas State University in Manhattan and killed one person in the tiny town of Soldier.

Names of the storm’s victims had not been released.

The hardest-hit area in the state seemed to be Chapman, a town of about 1,400 about 140 miles west of Kansas City. Officials said 100 homes were destroyed or heavily damaged and up to 80 percent of the town saw at least minor damage.

The widespread destruction, disaster relief crews and rescue dogs invited comparisons to the tornado in May 2007 that killed 11 and nearly wiped out Greensburg, a town of similar size in Kiowa County about 150 miles to the southwest.

“We’ve still got half the town intact,” said Brad Homman, director of administration and emergency services for Dickinson County, where Chapman is located.

But the Chapman tornado left some survivors with vivid – and frightening – memories.

About 100 people huddled in two locker rooms in the school district’s gymnasium for shelter as the tornado roared over them.

Construction worker Zac Arensman shielded his 4-year-old stepdaughter with his body after abandoning his family’s nearby trailer home. After the twister passed, he and others used a dislodged door as a stretcher to carry to safety a man who had been trapped in his car, one of three people authorities said had been critically injured. Two of the injured were in fair condition by Thursday afternoon.

“He was covered in blood,” Arensman said of the man he helped carry. “It was chaotic. That’s the best way to describe it – I mean, everybody freaking out, a mess.”

Outside the gym, several cars looked as if they had been tossed from the parking lot into a nearby field. The elementary and middle schools next to the gym lost part of their roofs and many of their windows and suffered other damage. The high school was in even worse shape, with dislodged cement blocks and bricks from the building strewn around it.

Arensman and his wife, Katrina, eventually were bused to a shelter in a building on the county fairgrounds in Abilene, 11 miles to the west. They weren’t sure when the would return home.

“I would just like to see if we have a house to go back to,” Katrina Arensman said.

About 35 miles away at Kansas State, storm damage was estimated to exceed $20 million, according to Tom Rawson, the university’s vice president for administration and finance. Thursday’s classes were canceled.

“The damage on campus is extensive,” Rawson said. “Roofs have been damaged or torn off, windows have been blown out in many buildings.”

Off of campus, the Sigma Alpha Epsilon house was heavily damaged, but all residents were safe and no injuries were reported.

In Soldier, only a few homes were damaged, but one man was found dead outside a mobile home, according to Sharon Watson, spokeswoman for the Kansas Adjutant General’s Department.

In Chapman, Dan Scanlan, a probation officer, survived by hunkering down in his bathtub. The tornado tore off part of his home’s roof, blew out the windows, moved it slightly off its foundation and damaged his garage enough that he couldn’t get his car out.

But Scanlan considered himself lucky.

“People around me – houses are gone,” Scanlan said. “Mine’s sitting there in probably the best shape of all.”