MEMPHIS, Tenn. — The National Weather Service confirmed an EF-4 tornado hit Putnam County, Tennessee, early Tuesday morning.

The EF-4 category tornado reached winds of at least 175 miles per hour.

The tornado left 18 people dead in the county, adding to the state’s total number of 25 fatalities.

Leaders estimated 100 homes were destroyed and several hundred people were displaced due to the damage. Cleanup efforts are expected to take days.

Meanwhile, authorities completed their second day of a full-scale search for storm victims. No victims were found Wednesday, but Putnam County Mayor Randy Porter said a person’s skeletal remains were found in the debris.

He said it’s likely the skeleton was there long before the storm.

“But we do not think that it is storm-related,” Porter said. “It appears to have been there for a year or so.”

There was so much debris on the ground in some areas, you couldn’t make out where one property began and another one ended.

A lot of damaged vehicles are marked with orange spray paint. That means authorities have already come by and marked it to show no one was inside.

Very little remains now of Dennis Padiernos’ house, but he and his wife stayed safe by taking refuge in a bathroom after the tornado shook them awake.

“As soon as we got up, like two seconds later, the wall caved in, and the ceiling was falling on top of us as we were running to the bathroom,” Padiernos said.

Only a day ago, Padiernos’ friends feared the worst.

“We were told by a few neighbors that Dennis and his wife did not make it — very, very sad moment,” Dennis Bynum said.

But sadness turned into relief when it came clear that the husband and wife survived the damage.

Luck didn’t extend to the house — the place he called home for two and a half years was gone.

“It represents our dream, basically,” Padiernos said. “We were here to settle down and just make a life for ourselves.”