Post by Zack Fradella on Feb 20, 2008 16:17:16 GMT -6
This is a story written by a student at Union University. Pretty amazing!
Dear Friends and Family,
I would have liked to write this letter sooner, but today is the first day I have been alone since the events of last Tuesday, February 5th. Most of you now know I was at Union University when the EF-4 tornado hit the dorms ten days ago, and many of you have read my friend Heather’s account. I wanted to take the time to write to each one of you my memories and experience in the storm. This is as much for me as it is for all of you. Please be patient as this may be a little long.
The Jackson schools let out early Tuesday due to “impending inclement weather,” so tutoring had already been cancelled. I decided I would try to get as much done as possible before the storms hit. I ran to lunch with Katelyn (one of my interns), picked up some essentials, and ran by our Lifeway Christian bookstore to pick up a commentary on Colossians. All afternoon, I had tons of energy. My adrenaline was kicking! When I got home, I cleaned my house and started laundry.
The whole day seemed strange, and my dad kept calling me to ask about the storms. We have tornadic activity so often in Jackson that my parents aren’t usually apprehensive. Dad didn’t seem worried, just really curious and concerned about my day, as well as where I would be that night. Mom told me later he had a sense of foreboding all day long, and he was extremely worried about me. That’s why he kept calling. We talked again around 5:30; and, after I hung up with him, I decided to find a downstairs location to which I could go when the sirens sounded. Memphis already had tornadoes, and they were headed toward us.
I could have gone anywhere. I didn’t think my downstairs neighbors were home, so I mentally listed all the places and homes I could go that had basements. In the end, I decided to call some of the students at Union who I mentor. I figured if I waited out the storms with them, it would give us a chance to catch up and have fun together. I called four students, three who lived in the same room, and none of them answered their phones. About five minutes later, they all called back. For those of you who don’t have tornadoes where you live, we never stay on the top floor during tornado warnings. Since I live on the second story, and Union University is across the street from my apartment complex, the dorms on the first floor were a logical choice to go for safety.
Kellie Roe, one of the girls, called me at about 6:20 to tell me it was looking bad, and they wanted me to come over before the sirens sounded signaling tornadoes in our county. I finished packing my “tornado bag” with the essentials: pajamas, dinner, my favorite Bible, the book I was reading, a first aid kit, a flashlight, my purse. Then I folded one last load of laundry, put our gigantic Maglite on the table for my roommate to use if the power was out when she returned, and drove over to Union.
All the parking spots were taken, so I parked illegally right in front of the dorms (my car was destroyed; that’s what I get!). I called my dad and said, “Dad, this may sound strange, but I feel like I need to tell you that I’m going to Jelks 11. Write this down. Here are the names of the girls who live there.” He wrote them down, and asked for their phone numbers. In the thirty or so tornado warnings I’ve been in over the last eleven years, we had never done that. I got off the phone and ran inside.
Kellie, Suzanne Short, and Heather Martin were all home. The TV was on, and the girls were just hanging out. About five minutes after I walked in, the sirens sounded. Suzanne is an RA (resident assistant), so she grabbed her phone and keys, and headed out to clear the top floor of Jelks, the building for which she was responsible. There were three girls who came downstairs to join us. Suzanne headed to the Commons to report in.
The six of us sat in the living room watching the TV. The announcer kept saying the conditions were producing a textbook super cell, but the storm still looked like it was quite a ways off. We were told later the tornado’s traveling speed increased from about 50 mph to 80-100 mph when in hit the Madison County line. This is why we didn’t realize it was so close. About two minutes before the tornado hit, Suzanne opened our door and yelled, “Get in the tub, NOW!” We were the last room she told before she sprinted for Hurt Commons to check back in. She almost didn't make it. Without her, though, we would all probably be dead.
We moved instantly to the bathroom. The three upstairs girls climbed into the tub, bobsled style. They were positioned toward the end of the tub with the faucet. Kellie, Heather, and I stood by the edge of the tub debating whether or not we should close the bathroom door. If we did, we couldn't hear the TV. We thought the storm was still two or three minutes away. All of a sudden, the wind picked up and baseball sized hail or debris started hitting the outside door and windows. We immediately moved to close the bathroom door the rest of the way.
At that moment, my ears popped. I've been extremely close to three other tornadoes in my life, and the pressure always changes making me to swallow in order to pop my ears. Never, though, has the pressure changed instantly, forcing my ears to pop. I looked at Kellie and Heather and said, "Girls, pressure change. Get in the bathtub now!" Heather said later that my face was a mixture of shock and disbelief. I knew we were about to be hit hard.
The next moments are a still a bit of a blur. I jumped into the tub on the end away from the faucet, and grabbed Heather's hand to help her in. As I was sinking down, Heather was trying to find space to fit. Kellie was almost in. After that, the lights went out, there was a pop (we think it was the bathroom door flying open), and the bathroom wall blew into and over us. Not only did the storm sound like a train (or a thousand of them – as Heather said), but it truly seemed as if a train had hit the bathroom wall. The noise was deafening. The power of the storm is absolutely indescribable.
Dirt and debris was pelting us, and we were screaming as the bathtub ripped from the floor on one side and tilted us at a slight angle. The wind was pushing from both the side and behind. I could feel the rotation. Heather told me later the wind was picking her legs up, and she felt like it was trying to suck her out of the tub. She said I was still gripping her hand. She held on to me and to the side of the tub to keep from flying out. I don't remember this, only that I was thinking, “I can’t believe it’s actually hitting us!” What I do remember is what happened next.
We heard crackling, and the second floor suddenly dropped on top of us. It's funny the things you remember. It reminded me of a game I played as a kid called Stay Alive, the one with all the marbles set up in a grid. You pull these sliders on the ends waiting to see what will drop. If there are holes, the marbles drop straight down with a bang. I felt like someone pulled the bottom out from the second floor, and it came crashing down.
We were pressed down further and further into the tub as the weight of the debris settled on us. It felt like the outside concrete wall fell on us after the second floor dropped. We'll never know for sure, but that's how it felt: bathroom wall from the side, second floor from the top, and the crushing weight of the concrete falling afterward. The storm was still raging all around us, but the sounds became muffled as the building pressed in on us from all sides, squishing us into only the space of the actual tub. I thought the pressure from above was going to kill us.
It became silent instantly. I read the tornado only lasted 37 seconds. It was fast, but the minutes following the storm lasted an eternity. The weight above us was still shifting as it became silent. It was at this moment that I realized I could barely breathe. I don’t know quite how to explain my position in the tub. My body will never again be able to twist that way. My mouth and chin were crushed against the right side of my chest all the way under my breast. My jaw was clenched. My neck was curled up and exposed kind of like a swan when it ducks its head. There was pressure from the back of the tub on my right side. My right lung was so compressed that no air was able to get in or out. At the time, I thought I had a collapsed lung. Heather was on top of me, and her hip was on my left lung.
The only sounds in the tub for the first few seconds were me trying to breathe. My first thoughts were similar to others’, “The dorms are destroyed. All the students are either dead or buried like we are, and they will never find us in time. Even if I can keep breathing, my air pocket is so small, I will suffocate before they get us out. This is the end of my life. I have no regrets.” I was calm and accepting of this, but I didn’t stop fighting for air. I didn’t give up. I was realistic.
As the other girls started to talk to each other, I realized I was the one who was injured the worst. I remember being extremely thankful. It would have been harder for me if another girl had been hurt and I wasn’t able to help her because we couldn’t move. These thoughts were not heroic or noble. I think this was my thought pattern because I am older and have lived more life. I don’t know. What I do know is that God was in the midst of us in the tub that night.
One of the girls at the other end of the tub found her cell phone but didn’t have enough signal to call out. Rebecca did. We were the first Union call 911 received that night. They dispatched the firefighters for a possible dorm collapse at Jelks Hall. It wasn’t until the two engines reached the intersection by campus that our rescuers realized a tornado hit us.
It became harder and harder for me to breathe, and the weight of the building increased more and more. My arms and legs started to go numb. I wiggled my fingers and toes to make sure one last time that I didn’t have a spinal cord injury. At this same moment, Heather realized I couldn’t breathe. She had heard me before but didn’t know it was I.
She started talking me through the situation, telling me to breathe, trying to shift her weight to help. It only made it worse. I started to pray in my mind, “Jesus, I need you…” Then I became aware my shift in thoughts made me forget to breathe. I told God I was sorry, but I couldn’t pray anymore or I wouldn’t remember to take my next breath. Heather didn’t know this since it was in my head, but the next thing she said was, “Julie, don’t try to pray, just breathe. I’m interceding for you. Focus on breathing.”
It was the sweetest moment of the whole night for me. No one else knew that Sunday night Heather called me and said she didn’t know what to pray for anymore. She asked me to start interceding for her before our God. Three weeks prior, one of her dearest friends died in an avalanche in Colorado. Heather was still grieving and struggling through Lygon’s death. I prayed that night for over an hour. The next night, the one before the tornado, Heather called to say thank you. I told her it was my privilege as her sister in Christ, and I knew she would do the same for me someday. I never imagined it would be the next night during a fight for my life.
I told God I was okay with dying but that He needed to save my life for Heather. “You promise not to give us more than we can handle, Lord, but I don’t think Heather can handle another death in her life. I have to live, Jesus. Heather couldn’t take it.” Then, I focused on breathing again.
The next minutes in the tub blurred together. I remember I knew when I ran out of oxygen. I was breathing in, but nothing came into my lungs. I began passing out, waking up, then passing out. At one point, I thought, “If I pass out for good, at least I won’t feel anything anymore.” The final time I woke up, it was to Heather’s voice yelling at me to breathe. She was saying, “Jesus, fill Julie’s lungs with your oxygen, help her breathe, Father. Sustain us.”
Heather’s account best tells the next piece of the story: “The tornado struck at 7:02 – the firemen arrived around 7:15. We were told later that when they arrived, the [captain] got out and was overwhelmed with the destruction. He sent off the team in twos to listen for voices. Students began to crawl out of their bathtubs. He heard muffled sounds near the pile of debris that used to be my [Heather’s] dorm room. There [was] 15 ft. of rubble on top of us. They had to remove it by hand.
When the rescuers got close to us, it got really scary. Julie’s breathing was terrible at this point and she was in and out of consciousness. As the rescuers neared our tub, it was terrifying because the rubble and debris would shift and the pressure would increase. Several of the girls were screaming – I was trying to breathe and couldn’t scream very well. Finally light broke through. But Julie wasn’t doing well. I couldn’t move because it hurt her and she couldn’t breathe. Her neck was exposed in such a way that if the rescuers slid the debris off, her neck would snap. She told me later that she was thinking, ‘I’ve survived the tornado, only to be killed in the rescue.’ She told me I had to tell them where she was. The firemen were telling us not to scream and panic, because they thought we were in pain each time we did. At this point, I could see one of the [firemens’ faces]. I screamed at him. I said, ‘Can you see my face??’ – (he could) – then I screamed out, ‘I am not panicking. You have to listen to me. There is someone stuck under me and if I move she can’t breathe. Her neck is exposed, so you can’t slide the debris. You have to lift it.’ Then, they lifted off the main piece, and for the first time in 45 minutes, we could breathe in fresh air!!”
It was the most amazing feeling. The pressure was gone, the building was off of us, I was completely conscious, and I could breathe!! There was a really bright light, and the firemen were leaning over us. They were a beautiful sight! It was then I saw that Heather’s legs never made it into the tub. We had debris and building pieces crushing us resting on all sides of the tub. The only exception was a very small gap where a 2x4 held the weight off Heather’s legs just a bit. Without this, her legs would have been crushed or severed. God even spared them!
We were free. The firemen pulled me out and passed me from person to person. The last guy to whom I was passed was instructed to hold me only on my left side, since I was in so much pain on the right. He held me so gently. I knew I was safe, and his body heat started to warm me up. It had been stifling under the building, but the fresh air was freezing. I thought, “This is what the arms of God must feel like: safe, secure, strong, and warm.” They tried to sit me down, then lay me down, but I couldn’t breathe in either position. So, I stood.
There are so many more details to that night: the triage station, my ICU nurse roommate Beth who found me in the chaos, the PT who drove me to the hospital, the amazing nurses at Jackson-Madison County General Hospital, the phone call to my parents, my friend Allison who braved the storms to get to me in the ER, my intern Katelyn who has taken over my job while I’m recovering. In everything, God was in control and orchestrating the events as if it was a beautiful masterpiece.
In all of this, no lives were lost. The EMS personnel present that night said there would be a minimum of 100 fatalities when they saw the campus. Nine other guys were trapped many more hours than we were. I was rescued after 41 minutes. Jesus knew that another few minutes, and I would have awoken in His arms rather than in the arms of my rescuers. That wasn’t His plan, though, on Tuesday night. So, I am still here on this earth for a little while longer.
I know my Jesus in a more intimate way than ever before. He has taught me more this week than I can ever share. My God is truly MIGHTY TO SAVE. He can move mountains, and He moved the mountain of rubble off of us that night. While we waited for the ambulance, Beth quoted, “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed” (2 Corinthians 4:8-9). God saved us, and we were not destroyed even though the building crushed us.
I know my days are numbered, but I will not leave this earth until Jesus says it is time. I will proclaim His glory, His grace, and His strength until then. I had peace about my death that night, and I have peace about my life right now. I have a flip calendar in front of my kitchen sink at home, and the thought for February 5 is a quote by Janice Hughes, “Rich is the woman who has a praying friend.” My life is rich. I had Heather and Kellie that night, and I have a multitude of others who have prayed for me since.
If you have read this story and do not know Jesus Christ, I pray that you seek out others who can share His inexpressible love and grace with you. My story would not exist without God, I would not be alive today if it was not for His grace, and He placed me in that bathtub Tuesday night for a reason. I have no regrets that I went to Jelks 11. There is no other place I should have been that night. He has a perfect plan for my life, and He has one for yours as well. Most people would call February 5th a tragedy, but I think it is a blessing. Many people say that blessings are only perfect things that are not hard and cause no pain. Jesus and His Word, the Bible, do not promise us a perfect life of “blessings” that include no struggle or pain. Instead, He promises that He will reveal Himself to us through struggles, He will walk with us and sustain us through them, and He gives us hope – hope that will never disappoint as we walk through life on this earth. I am blessed. I live with this hope, and I look forward to heaven like never before.
I am still healing. I have experienced trauma along with so many others on Union’s campus that night. Certain noises scare me, I am afraid to sleep alone, and I have a hard time believing the wall will not crash in on me when I turn the lights out at night. I am fully confident in my God, but I am fully human. Just as my God is Might to Save, I am now trusting Him in the weeks and months to come that He is Mighty to Heal.
________________________________________________
Stories like these put severe weather in perspective. The weather is not always something that provides awesome pictures and sights; weather can be deadly at times and one of the main reasons I am becoming a meteorologists is to save lives.
Dear Friends and Family,
I would have liked to write this letter sooner, but today is the first day I have been alone since the events of last Tuesday, February 5th. Most of you now know I was at Union University when the EF-4 tornado hit the dorms ten days ago, and many of you have read my friend Heather’s account. I wanted to take the time to write to each one of you my memories and experience in the storm. This is as much for me as it is for all of you. Please be patient as this may be a little long.
The Jackson schools let out early Tuesday due to “impending inclement weather,” so tutoring had already been cancelled. I decided I would try to get as much done as possible before the storms hit. I ran to lunch with Katelyn (one of my interns), picked up some essentials, and ran by our Lifeway Christian bookstore to pick up a commentary on Colossians. All afternoon, I had tons of energy. My adrenaline was kicking! When I got home, I cleaned my house and started laundry.
The whole day seemed strange, and my dad kept calling me to ask about the storms. We have tornadic activity so often in Jackson that my parents aren’t usually apprehensive. Dad didn’t seem worried, just really curious and concerned about my day, as well as where I would be that night. Mom told me later he had a sense of foreboding all day long, and he was extremely worried about me. That’s why he kept calling. We talked again around 5:30; and, after I hung up with him, I decided to find a downstairs location to which I could go when the sirens sounded. Memphis already had tornadoes, and they were headed toward us.
I could have gone anywhere. I didn’t think my downstairs neighbors were home, so I mentally listed all the places and homes I could go that had basements. In the end, I decided to call some of the students at Union who I mentor. I figured if I waited out the storms with them, it would give us a chance to catch up and have fun together. I called four students, three who lived in the same room, and none of them answered their phones. About five minutes later, they all called back. For those of you who don’t have tornadoes where you live, we never stay on the top floor during tornado warnings. Since I live on the second story, and Union University is across the street from my apartment complex, the dorms on the first floor were a logical choice to go for safety.
Kellie Roe, one of the girls, called me at about 6:20 to tell me it was looking bad, and they wanted me to come over before the sirens sounded signaling tornadoes in our county. I finished packing my “tornado bag” with the essentials: pajamas, dinner, my favorite Bible, the book I was reading, a first aid kit, a flashlight, my purse. Then I folded one last load of laundry, put our gigantic Maglite on the table for my roommate to use if the power was out when she returned, and drove over to Union.
All the parking spots were taken, so I parked illegally right in front of the dorms (my car was destroyed; that’s what I get!). I called my dad and said, “Dad, this may sound strange, but I feel like I need to tell you that I’m going to Jelks 11. Write this down. Here are the names of the girls who live there.” He wrote them down, and asked for their phone numbers. In the thirty or so tornado warnings I’ve been in over the last eleven years, we had never done that. I got off the phone and ran inside.
Kellie, Suzanne Short, and Heather Martin were all home. The TV was on, and the girls were just hanging out. About five minutes after I walked in, the sirens sounded. Suzanne is an RA (resident assistant), so she grabbed her phone and keys, and headed out to clear the top floor of Jelks, the building for which she was responsible. There were three girls who came downstairs to join us. Suzanne headed to the Commons to report in.
The six of us sat in the living room watching the TV. The announcer kept saying the conditions were producing a textbook super cell, but the storm still looked like it was quite a ways off. We were told later the tornado’s traveling speed increased from about 50 mph to 80-100 mph when in hit the Madison County line. This is why we didn’t realize it was so close. About two minutes before the tornado hit, Suzanne opened our door and yelled, “Get in the tub, NOW!” We were the last room she told before she sprinted for Hurt Commons to check back in. She almost didn't make it. Without her, though, we would all probably be dead.
We moved instantly to the bathroom. The three upstairs girls climbed into the tub, bobsled style. They were positioned toward the end of the tub with the faucet. Kellie, Heather, and I stood by the edge of the tub debating whether or not we should close the bathroom door. If we did, we couldn't hear the TV. We thought the storm was still two or three minutes away. All of a sudden, the wind picked up and baseball sized hail or debris started hitting the outside door and windows. We immediately moved to close the bathroom door the rest of the way.
At that moment, my ears popped. I've been extremely close to three other tornadoes in my life, and the pressure always changes making me to swallow in order to pop my ears. Never, though, has the pressure changed instantly, forcing my ears to pop. I looked at Kellie and Heather and said, "Girls, pressure change. Get in the bathtub now!" Heather said later that my face was a mixture of shock and disbelief. I knew we were about to be hit hard.
The next moments are a still a bit of a blur. I jumped into the tub on the end away from the faucet, and grabbed Heather's hand to help her in. As I was sinking down, Heather was trying to find space to fit. Kellie was almost in. After that, the lights went out, there was a pop (we think it was the bathroom door flying open), and the bathroom wall blew into and over us. Not only did the storm sound like a train (or a thousand of them – as Heather said), but it truly seemed as if a train had hit the bathroom wall. The noise was deafening. The power of the storm is absolutely indescribable.
Dirt and debris was pelting us, and we were screaming as the bathtub ripped from the floor on one side and tilted us at a slight angle. The wind was pushing from both the side and behind. I could feel the rotation. Heather told me later the wind was picking her legs up, and she felt like it was trying to suck her out of the tub. She said I was still gripping her hand. She held on to me and to the side of the tub to keep from flying out. I don't remember this, only that I was thinking, “I can’t believe it’s actually hitting us!” What I do remember is what happened next.
We heard crackling, and the second floor suddenly dropped on top of us. It's funny the things you remember. It reminded me of a game I played as a kid called Stay Alive, the one with all the marbles set up in a grid. You pull these sliders on the ends waiting to see what will drop. If there are holes, the marbles drop straight down with a bang. I felt like someone pulled the bottom out from the second floor, and it came crashing down.
We were pressed down further and further into the tub as the weight of the debris settled on us. It felt like the outside concrete wall fell on us after the second floor dropped. We'll never know for sure, but that's how it felt: bathroom wall from the side, second floor from the top, and the crushing weight of the concrete falling afterward. The storm was still raging all around us, but the sounds became muffled as the building pressed in on us from all sides, squishing us into only the space of the actual tub. I thought the pressure from above was going to kill us.
It became silent instantly. I read the tornado only lasted 37 seconds. It was fast, but the minutes following the storm lasted an eternity. The weight above us was still shifting as it became silent. It was at this moment that I realized I could barely breathe. I don’t know quite how to explain my position in the tub. My body will never again be able to twist that way. My mouth and chin were crushed against the right side of my chest all the way under my breast. My jaw was clenched. My neck was curled up and exposed kind of like a swan when it ducks its head. There was pressure from the back of the tub on my right side. My right lung was so compressed that no air was able to get in or out. At the time, I thought I had a collapsed lung. Heather was on top of me, and her hip was on my left lung.
The only sounds in the tub for the first few seconds were me trying to breathe. My first thoughts were similar to others’, “The dorms are destroyed. All the students are either dead or buried like we are, and they will never find us in time. Even if I can keep breathing, my air pocket is so small, I will suffocate before they get us out. This is the end of my life. I have no regrets.” I was calm and accepting of this, but I didn’t stop fighting for air. I didn’t give up. I was realistic.
As the other girls started to talk to each other, I realized I was the one who was injured the worst. I remember being extremely thankful. It would have been harder for me if another girl had been hurt and I wasn’t able to help her because we couldn’t move. These thoughts were not heroic or noble. I think this was my thought pattern because I am older and have lived more life. I don’t know. What I do know is that God was in the midst of us in the tub that night.
One of the girls at the other end of the tub found her cell phone but didn’t have enough signal to call out. Rebecca did. We were the first Union call 911 received that night. They dispatched the firefighters for a possible dorm collapse at Jelks Hall. It wasn’t until the two engines reached the intersection by campus that our rescuers realized a tornado hit us.
It became harder and harder for me to breathe, and the weight of the building increased more and more. My arms and legs started to go numb. I wiggled my fingers and toes to make sure one last time that I didn’t have a spinal cord injury. At this same moment, Heather realized I couldn’t breathe. She had heard me before but didn’t know it was I.
She started talking me through the situation, telling me to breathe, trying to shift her weight to help. It only made it worse. I started to pray in my mind, “Jesus, I need you…” Then I became aware my shift in thoughts made me forget to breathe. I told God I was sorry, but I couldn’t pray anymore or I wouldn’t remember to take my next breath. Heather didn’t know this since it was in my head, but the next thing she said was, “Julie, don’t try to pray, just breathe. I’m interceding for you. Focus on breathing.”
It was the sweetest moment of the whole night for me. No one else knew that Sunday night Heather called me and said she didn’t know what to pray for anymore. She asked me to start interceding for her before our God. Three weeks prior, one of her dearest friends died in an avalanche in Colorado. Heather was still grieving and struggling through Lygon’s death. I prayed that night for over an hour. The next night, the one before the tornado, Heather called to say thank you. I told her it was my privilege as her sister in Christ, and I knew she would do the same for me someday. I never imagined it would be the next night during a fight for my life.
I told God I was okay with dying but that He needed to save my life for Heather. “You promise not to give us more than we can handle, Lord, but I don’t think Heather can handle another death in her life. I have to live, Jesus. Heather couldn’t take it.” Then, I focused on breathing again.
The next minutes in the tub blurred together. I remember I knew when I ran out of oxygen. I was breathing in, but nothing came into my lungs. I began passing out, waking up, then passing out. At one point, I thought, “If I pass out for good, at least I won’t feel anything anymore.” The final time I woke up, it was to Heather’s voice yelling at me to breathe. She was saying, “Jesus, fill Julie’s lungs with your oxygen, help her breathe, Father. Sustain us.”
Heather’s account best tells the next piece of the story: “The tornado struck at 7:02 – the firemen arrived around 7:15. We were told later that when they arrived, the [captain] got out and was overwhelmed with the destruction. He sent off the team in twos to listen for voices. Students began to crawl out of their bathtubs. He heard muffled sounds near the pile of debris that used to be my [Heather’s] dorm room. There [was] 15 ft. of rubble on top of us. They had to remove it by hand.
When the rescuers got close to us, it got really scary. Julie’s breathing was terrible at this point and she was in and out of consciousness. As the rescuers neared our tub, it was terrifying because the rubble and debris would shift and the pressure would increase. Several of the girls were screaming – I was trying to breathe and couldn’t scream very well. Finally light broke through. But Julie wasn’t doing well. I couldn’t move because it hurt her and she couldn’t breathe. Her neck was exposed in such a way that if the rescuers slid the debris off, her neck would snap. She told me later that she was thinking, ‘I’ve survived the tornado, only to be killed in the rescue.’ She told me I had to tell them where she was. The firemen were telling us not to scream and panic, because they thought we were in pain each time we did. At this point, I could see one of the [firemens’ faces]. I screamed at him. I said, ‘Can you see my face??’ – (he could) – then I screamed out, ‘I am not panicking. You have to listen to me. There is someone stuck under me and if I move she can’t breathe. Her neck is exposed, so you can’t slide the debris. You have to lift it.’ Then, they lifted off the main piece, and for the first time in 45 minutes, we could breathe in fresh air!!”
It was the most amazing feeling. The pressure was gone, the building was off of us, I was completely conscious, and I could breathe!! There was a really bright light, and the firemen were leaning over us. They were a beautiful sight! It was then I saw that Heather’s legs never made it into the tub. We had debris and building pieces crushing us resting on all sides of the tub. The only exception was a very small gap where a 2x4 held the weight off Heather’s legs just a bit. Without this, her legs would have been crushed or severed. God even spared them!
We were free. The firemen pulled me out and passed me from person to person. The last guy to whom I was passed was instructed to hold me only on my left side, since I was in so much pain on the right. He held me so gently. I knew I was safe, and his body heat started to warm me up. It had been stifling under the building, but the fresh air was freezing. I thought, “This is what the arms of God must feel like: safe, secure, strong, and warm.” They tried to sit me down, then lay me down, but I couldn’t breathe in either position. So, I stood.
There are so many more details to that night: the triage station, my ICU nurse roommate Beth who found me in the chaos, the PT who drove me to the hospital, the amazing nurses at Jackson-Madison County General Hospital, the phone call to my parents, my friend Allison who braved the storms to get to me in the ER, my intern Katelyn who has taken over my job while I’m recovering. In everything, God was in control and orchestrating the events as if it was a beautiful masterpiece.
In all of this, no lives were lost. The EMS personnel present that night said there would be a minimum of 100 fatalities when they saw the campus. Nine other guys were trapped many more hours than we were. I was rescued after 41 minutes. Jesus knew that another few minutes, and I would have awoken in His arms rather than in the arms of my rescuers. That wasn’t His plan, though, on Tuesday night. So, I am still here on this earth for a little while longer.
I know my Jesus in a more intimate way than ever before. He has taught me more this week than I can ever share. My God is truly MIGHTY TO SAVE. He can move mountains, and He moved the mountain of rubble off of us that night. While we waited for the ambulance, Beth quoted, “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed” (2 Corinthians 4:8-9). God saved us, and we were not destroyed even though the building crushed us.
I know my days are numbered, but I will not leave this earth until Jesus says it is time. I will proclaim His glory, His grace, and His strength until then. I had peace about my death that night, and I have peace about my life right now. I have a flip calendar in front of my kitchen sink at home, and the thought for February 5 is a quote by Janice Hughes, “Rich is the woman who has a praying friend.” My life is rich. I had Heather and Kellie that night, and I have a multitude of others who have prayed for me since.
If you have read this story and do not know Jesus Christ, I pray that you seek out others who can share His inexpressible love and grace with you. My story would not exist without God, I would not be alive today if it was not for His grace, and He placed me in that bathtub Tuesday night for a reason. I have no regrets that I went to Jelks 11. There is no other place I should have been that night. He has a perfect plan for my life, and He has one for yours as well. Most people would call February 5th a tragedy, but I think it is a blessing. Many people say that blessings are only perfect things that are not hard and cause no pain. Jesus and His Word, the Bible, do not promise us a perfect life of “blessings” that include no struggle or pain. Instead, He promises that He will reveal Himself to us through struggles, He will walk with us and sustain us through them, and He gives us hope – hope that will never disappoint as we walk through life on this earth. I am blessed. I live with this hope, and I look forward to heaven like never before.
I am still healing. I have experienced trauma along with so many others on Union’s campus that night. Certain noises scare me, I am afraid to sleep alone, and I have a hard time believing the wall will not crash in on me when I turn the lights out at night. I am fully confident in my God, but I am fully human. Just as my God is Might to Save, I am now trusting Him in the weeks and months to come that He is Mighty to Heal.
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Stories like these put severe weather in perspective. The weather is not always something that provides awesome pictures and sights; weather can be deadly at times and one of the main reasons I am becoming a meteorologists is to save lives.
