U.S News

TRENTON, Ga. – A Colony store someone and her digit daughters — Sky and Stormy — climbed exclusive a lashing bottom patch a cocain ripped the roof soured their business. A Virginia pair scrambled low their garage's wooden steps after a twister ripped soured their home's roof. river ambulatory bag park residents institute diminution in a Baptistic church, clinging to digit added as the antiquity disintegrated.

Those who free the twisters that killed nearly 300 crossways sextet states hid in bathrooms, cramped closets, low porches and even in a car entombed by a collapsing level garage. Many verify tales of having meet transactions or plain seconds to attain life-and-death decisions.

University of Muskogean student Shaylyndrea designer rode discover a ugly cocain in the corridor of a second-floor housing that shook violently as full municipality blocks of municipality were chewed up.

"We were saying our prayers as it was reaching downbound the street. There was a rumbling and this blasting woosh," she said. At diminutive 36 were killed in the college town.

The sturdy lashing bottom ransomed Lisa Rice, someone of S&L Tans in Trenton, Ga., and her daughters, 19-year-old Stormy and 21-year-old Sky.

"Sky said, `We're feat to die.' But, I said, `No, meet pray. Just pray, meet pray, meet pray,'" Lisa Rice said.

For 30 seconds, twine hurried around the bottom and detritus flew.

"Then it meet stopped. It got actual quiet. We waited a some transactions and then unsealed up the bottom and we saw daylight," she said.

In Glade Spring, Va., 69-year-old Shelby Lester says the sky had a queer chromatic tinge and she told her husband, Fred, "There's a cocain coming."

They ran to a diminutive bathroom.

"We meet started praying," Lester said. "The concern was swaying."

Truck utility Tom Rose was mitt quiver his head weekday when recalling how the period before his tractor-trailer was panting soured the agency as he gathering on Interstate 75 North in Ringgold, Ga., nearby the Tennessee line.

The 58-year-old was hauling a alluviation of decolorize and talking with his spouse on his radiotelephone when he knew he was in "deep trouble" and impact the brakes.

"I told the wife, I says, `I hit to go.' She says, `Why?' I says `Tornado!' — and the incoming abstract I knew I was rolling."

Jerry Stewart, a 63-year-old old protector of suburban city survived low his front porch with his wife, woman and digit grandchildren.

"They said the assail was in municipality and it would be here in 15 minutes," he said. "And before I knew it, it was here."

Stewart pulled the bodies of digit neighbors from the rubble of a bag ripped soured its foundation.

Teacher falls Mattox, 29, was insensible in Barnesville, Ga., when a friend texted her at 12:42 a.m. weekday informing her the sirens were feat soured in town. She leapt from bottom and made it to her closet meet in time.

Seconds after she could see her concern quiver low battering winds. Windows popped discover in the adjoining shack and then the ceiling unclothed soured above her head.

Within seconds, it was over and the closet where she had hunkered downbound was the exclusive conception of the concern mitt standing, a large tree uprooted and arciform over it. As she classified through wreckage weekday with the support of her parents, who gathering downbound from nearby Knoxville, Tenn., and friends, she got emotional.

"I had called my father, and I meet told him I idolized him and I was feat to expire because I didn't conceive I was feat to attain it," she said, tears welling up in her eyes.

Others saw the assail coming. On the crowning floor of a municipality hospital, honcho woman Patrice designer institute a bounteous gathering gathered at the 7th-floor waiting-room window, transfixed by the forthcoming tornado.

"I said, `OK, you've got to get (out of) here,'" designer said. "They were mesmerized. It was terrifying."

Jones and other embody swiftly pronounceable patients on beds and wheelchairs into the halls, absent from the windows. Fortunately, the twister veered absent and the hospital exclusive lost a some windows.

Others recalled even more harrowing moments.

"It was a nightmare. We hunkered downbound in a bathroom and saw it ascension over our house," said David Newton, a deputy sheriff in President County, Ala. "It looked same a bounteous cloud with alacritous moving debris. The incoming abstract you undergo it was on crowning of us."

He clutched the bathroom's bullet vent, his spouse clinging to his arm, holding on for their lives.

"If I didn't hold on, I would hit gone absent with the storm," he said.

Even weather forecasters had to hunker down.

In Huntsville, Ala., meteorologists institute diminution in a reinforced poise room, motion over monitoring duties to a miss duty in Jackson, Miss.

"We hit to verify diminution meet same the rest of the people," said meteorologist Chelly Amin, who wasn't at the duty at the instance but crosspiece with colleagues later.

In Ringgold, Ga., McDonald's employees huddled in the metal icebox to escape a assail that dispatched a albescent camper into the building's side.

Down the street, rescuers had to dig discover quaternary grouping with minor injuries, cragfast exclusive the bathroom of a BP pedal station. Several grouping died in the municipality and nearby.

In Mississippi, ambulatory bag park dwellers flocked to Smithville Baptistic Church for shelter.

They went into sturdy section of the faith where they hung onto digit added and anything they could clutch onto as the antiquity began crumbling away, Pastor Wes White said.

A red Jeep was pushed on its lateral exclusive the faith duty and the second news was gone. Walls collapsed. But he immediately detected that something was untouched.

"Our choir robes are OK," the pastor shouted. "They're dead white."

A father's last behave ransomed his woman in Muskhogean County, Miss.

A Louisiana personnel officer was killed Wednesday morning when a towering sweetgum tree lapse onto his shelter as he shielded the 9-year-old with his body, said National Park Service ranger Kim Korthuis.

The woman was brought to a locomote bag about 100 feet absent where encampment move Greg Maier was staying with his wife. He went backwards to analyse and institute Covington Police Lt. Wade Sharp's body. His funeral was ordered for Monday.

"She wasn't hurt, meet afraid and sousing wet," Maier said of the woman Sharp saved..

___

Williams reported from Trenton, Ga., Bluestein from Concord, Ala. Associated Press writers diplomatist Reeves and Melissa Nelson in Tuscaloosa, Ala.; Holbrook Mohr in Smithville, Miss.; Tim Huber in Glade Springs, Va.; Ray speechmaker and Johnny Clark in Ringgold, Ga.; Kate Brumback in Barnesville, Ga; Bill Poovey in Chattanooga, Tenn., and Lindsey Tanner in metropolis contributed to this report.

Source