WRIGHT, Wyo. (AP) - Gov. Dave Freudenthal described the cleanup effort here as "remarkable," but said much work still needed to be done five days after a deadly tornado ripped through town.

Freudenthal, a Democrat, and U.S. Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Wyo., spent Wednesday morning in Wright. Freudenthal said cleanup crews had made tremendous progress, noting that photographs taken the day after the tornado showed homes dropped on top of one another and debris littered throughout the town.

"Physically, what you saw today was the results of an awful lot of cleanup work," Freudenthal said. "The Highway Department, along with local ranchers and the mines and everybody, have had trucks and equipment in there, cleaning up the sites. Today, you can actually see places where the homes were. They're not stacked on top of each other, the way they were at first. A lot of it has moved toward a more orderly cleanup.

"It is still a scene of devastation. But it is a scene in which a great deal of progress has been made."

Two people were killed by the tornado that struck this community of 1,500 on Friday afternoon. A preliminary report said 60 homes were destroyed and 59 others sustained such severe damage that residents will need to seek temporary housing assistance.

On Tuesday, Freudenthal asked President Bush to declare Wright a disaster area, allowing local residents and business access to federal disaster relief programs.

Freudenthal said more than one third of the homes in Wright sustained some damage in the storm. However, after a 2002 flood that destroyed one third of the homes and most of the businesses in Kaycee in central Wyoming, federal officials said not enough people had been affected to spur some federal assistance programs.

"They need to be flexible with their determination about federal funds," Thomas said in a news release. "What I've seen here in this small town is certainly significant damage. We owe these folks some certainty about getting back on their feet."

David King, emergency management coordinator for Campbell County, said he was still looking into reports that tornado sirens either didn't go off in time to allow people to find shelter or didn't go off at all.

"Everybody has a different perception of the same event," King said. "You have to take what everybody has said and develop the bigger picture."

Susan Sanders, warning coordination meteorologist for the Rapid City, S.D., National Weather Service station that servers Campbell County, said the tornado dropped in so quickly that sirens might not have done much good.

"It formed so close to town," she said. "It wasn't like they spotted it 10 miles from town and it took 10 minutes to get there."

Freudenthal said he was overwhelmed by the support locals have shown each other, opening their homes to neighbors whose homes were destroyed. Although dozens of homes have been declared uninhabitable, the number of people staying in the emergency shelter has fallen each night.

"They may not even open it tonight," Freudenthal said. "It's just amazing."

"When you see this kind of work, it reminds you why you live in Wyoming," Freudenthal said. "These are good people."