MARYSVILLE, Ind. — This tiny Indiana farm town has no mayor, no school and no shopping center. And after last week’s deadly tornadoes, it has virtually nowhere left to live.

Nearly every home in Marysville was destroyed or so badly damaged it will probably have to be torn down — a realization that raised an emotional question for people still gathering belongings from the debris: Is it worth rebuilding a place that has so little?

In some of the tiny communities smashed by the violent weather, the idea hangs in the air, raising doubts even among families who have lived in the same place for generations.

Before it was erased by the storm, Marysville had been a hub of farming activity in deep southern Indiana since the mid-1800s, with many sons working the same rows of corn and soybeans as their grandparents.

But as they surveyed the devastation, some townspeople concluded it would be easier to abandon the village and look for work in Louisville, Ky., 30 miles to the south.

“I think this community is pretty much gone. I don’t think anyone will rebuild. A lot of people had no insurance,” Scott Meadors said Sunday as he salvaged belongings from the storm’s aftermath.

When a bigger population center such as Joplin, Mo., is crippled by tornadoes, there is rarely any question about rebuilding.

Larger cities typically have greater resources and defined downtowns to serve as focal points.

But this flyspeck village may have suffered a mortal blow.

Sean Gilbert says there’s nothing to do but move away. He doubts little if anything will be rebuilt in Marysville, a town of a few hundred inhabitants that was struggling economically even before Friday’s storms, which killed 40 people in five states.

“It’s a shock,” he said, standing beside his family’s 150-year-old home, which had its siding torn away, great gashes in its roof, a caved-in front porch and metal shutters creaking eerily in the wind.

Gilbert, who works at a restaurant in the Louisville suburb of New Albany, is staying with a brother who already lives there. He’s planning to move there permanently, though his parents are intent on staying.

Gilbert’s grandfather arrived in the Marysville area from Kentucky in the mid-20th century, stepping from a boxcar along with his family and a small herd of livestock in search of a bigger farm and a better life.

Longtime residents spoke of their childhoods in loving terms, remembering the basketball games, birthday parties and barbecues.

“It was serene, like a Normal Rockwell painting,” Bruce Bridgewater said.

The government of surrounding Clark County planned to help with debris removal and the restoration of infrastructure and utilities.

“Our hope is it doesn’t just become a name on a map,” said County Commissioner John Perkins. “We would hope that what was destroyed – and that’s most of it – can be rebuilt.”

Beyond that, the village’s survival could depend on how much federal and state assistance trickles down to local communities.

“It’d be a terribly sad thing to see,” Perkins said of the possibility that Marysville could be abandoned.

Other nearby communities risked losing population, too.

In Chelsea, home to a few churches, a general store and a collection of far-flung farms, some had decided to move on.

One was Erin Boyner, whose husband, John, was among four area people killed in the storm.

She felt she had nothing to return to, said friends who were helping pile and burn the scraps that used to be her home.

“She said she’d never come back. It’s something she never planned on: being 30 years old and widowed,” said Bruce Wilds, a family friend who had just found a few of her wedding photos in the ruins.