KILGORE - Though he didn't get any sleep Tuesday night, Eddie Sparks said Wednesday morning that he didn't want the sun to go away.

"I don't want to see any more dark clouds," Sparks said, as friends, family and people he didn't even know used tractors and chain saws to clean up property on U.S. 259. Sparks rents the land just south of Kilgore to train thoroughbred race horses.

On Tuesday night, shortly after Sparks went to bed, an EF1 tornado tore roofs off two barns and collapsed a third entirely, the National Weather Service confirmed.

"I'm just shaking all over right now," Sparks said. "I've never believed in sleeping pills, but I might need them now."

Several trees on the property were snapped midway up their trunks, with branches and limbs scattered throughout several acres. Other trees were plastered with twisted sheet metal, blown by winds of up to 113 mph.

Twelve horses escaped injury, and the mobile home where Sparks lived with his wife, Linda Sparks, however, was barely touched.

"I was laying down, and my wife was still up," Sparks said. "She started hollering ... Something just felt different. I could feel the floor moving."

Sparks said he ran to the front door to check the weather outside and the attached front porch was gone.

"It disappeared," he said. "It's just the Lord's will that my wife and I are still here. It was very scary."

An official with the weather service said the tornadic activity around East Texas formed near Sparks' farm in northern Rusk County and traveled 21 miles to Longview before it broke up. Keith Stellman, warning coordination meteorologist, said he's not sure how long the twister was on the ground.

"It was down low enough to pick up tin and put it in the trees," Stellman said as he inspected Sparks' land. "It was also low enough to collapse a barn."

Rusk County Precinct 1 Commissioner Bill Hale said much of his precinct bore the brunt of the storm.

"The storm pretty much followed a path from New London all the way northeast to FM 918, FM 850 and U.S. Highway 259, then crossed FM 2276 before entering Gregg County," he said.

Hale said dozens of trees were down across many roads but were cleared by 1 a.m.

Thousands of people remained without electricity until Wednesday, said Ricki Keeling, Rusk County Electric Cooperative's manager of member services. Fewer than 15 customers were without power by mid-afternoon.

"We had a catering job going out, but we couldn't work on it until the lights came back on at six this morning," said Gary Wade, owner of Boomtown BBQ. Wade's business sits just north of the farm property he leases to Sparks.

"The barn where we store the tractors - as you can see - are gone," Wade said. "It's going to take a lot of work to get it back in shape."

At least six people were at Sparks' farm by dawn, cutting up fallen trees and using front-end loaders to make a pile of the scattered sheet metal.

"It's unbelievable at the amount of people who stopped and helped," Sparks said. "Some of them I don't even know."

Hale said it could take at least a week to clean up the damage throughout his precinct.

Sparks, meanwhile, is not sure he'll continue to hang his hat at the land.

"Eventually, I know I'm going to have to build (my wife) a new home," Sparks said, adding that he was insured for his personal losses. "I don't think she'll go back into a mobile home."