Search

As I left Audra and the kids to search for other survivors, I remember Audra telling me to be ready for the possibility of finding someone dead. I first went across the street from our house. Our neighbor’s house was completely gone. All the walls were down and beat up cars were on top of it. I yelled into the reckage, but heard no response. All I saw was a small toy the boy Jay’s age use to play with. My heart sank. Just then our next door neighbor come up to me and told me he had told them to get out of their house, but they had told him they were going to wait it out. He had driven his family out just before the storm and had circled back behind it to help rescue people. We both thought the family of three was under the mass of wood. (We didn’t find out until 4 days later that they were actually safe at a family member’s house.)

At this point a group of men yelled from down the street that they found someone. When I got there I saw a woman in her bathtub buried under a wall with her washer and dryer on top of that. Wires and gas pipes were preventing us from removing the wall. I ran back to my house to get wire cutters, but I couldn’t get into my garage where the tools were. I saw that my other neighbor’s garage was open so I borrowed a wire cutter and wrench from them.

Back with the woman, the wrench and wire cutter allowed us to disconnect the pipes from the washer and dryer and get the wall off her. She appeared to have no broken bones and was just scratched and bruised. After this I went back to check on Audra, Jay and Hanna. The fire department had just arrived and told us we had to leave the neighborhood and to go to the Church of the Rock for shelter.