Residents walk past tornado-damaged homes Thursday in Chapman. Tornadoes also raked the state a day earlier on Wednesday, killing at least two people, destroying much of the small town of Chapman and causing extensive damage at Kansas State University.

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 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.

Officials estimated the damage at more than $20 million and said the tornado heavily damaged or destroyed 65 buildings or homes, meaning between half to 60 percent of Chapman’s buildings were hit.

“It’s always about, ‘My neighbor had it worse than I did. Check in on them,'” Rep. Jerry Moran, whose congressional district includes Chapman, said after touring the area with Gov. Kathleen Sebelius. “In a sense, we’re fortunate in Chapman that the entire town was not destroyed and at least a significant portion of the business community is intact.”

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 widespread destruction, disaster relief crews and rescue dogs in Chapman, a town of about 1,400 about 140 miles west of Kansas City, 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.

Brad Homman, director of administration and emergency services for Dickinson County, said residents were being allowed in to collect personal belongings. The City Council imposed a 9 p.m.-6 a.m. curfew and said residents whose homes were not seriously damaged could stay in town if they followed the curfew.

Crews expect to begin removing debris Saturday.

The city restored water service Thursday, although residents were told to boil it for 10 minutes before drinking or using it to cook. Electricity also was expected to be restored to an undamaged portion of the town’s northern side by Thursday night.

“We’ve still got half the town intact,” said Homman, who added that the National Weather Service had told him the tornado was at least an EF3.

But the 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 mobile 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.

Officials said about 70 percent of the economic damage caused by the storm, or about $14 million, was suffered by the school system.

“The devastation is enormous. I mean, you get a real sense of the power of Mother Nature. It looks like a bomb went off,” Sebelius said. “The schools are really dismantled.”

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.

Another shelter had been set up in Salina and the USDA has offered residents use of 64 vacant apartments it maintains in the area for its rural development service.

Moran said he expects the federal government to issue a disaster declaration to help rebuild infrastructure and residences. And Sebelius said she’ll be adding Dickinson County to a disaster declaration she had already issued after a previous storm.

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.

About 30 summer school classes will be taught at temporary locations today. Some classrooms in damaged buildings could be functional by Monday, said M. Duane Nellis, provost and senior vice president.

About 15 homes in Manhattan were “leveled” and more than 30 others, as well as some businesses, were seriously damaged, according to a news release from the Riley County Police Department.

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.”