CASPER
New member
TRENTON, Ga. – A Georgia salon owner and her two daughters — Sky and Stormy — climbed inside a tanning bed while a tornado ripped the roof off their business. A Virginia couple scrambled under their garage's wooden steps after a twister ripped off their home's roof. Mississippi mobile home park residents found shelter in a Baptist church, clinging to one another as the building disintegrated.
Those who escaped the twisters that killed nearly 300 across six states hid in bathrooms, cramped closets, under porches and even in a car entombed by a collapsing basement garage. Many tell tales of having just minutes or mere seconds to make life-and-death decisions.
University of Alabama student Shaylyndrea Jones rode out a monstrous tornado in the hallway of a second-floor apartment that shook violently as whole city blocks of Tuscaloosa were chewed up.
"We were saying our prayers as it was coming down the street. There was a rumbling and this loud woosh," she said. At least 36 were killed in the college town.
The sturdy tanning bed saved Lisa Rice, owner of S&L Tans in Trenton, Ga., and her daughters, 19-year-old Stormy and 21-year-old Sky.
"Sky said, `We're going to die.' But, I said, `No, just pray. Just pray, just pray, just pray,'" Lisa Rice said.
For 30 seconds, wind rushed around the bed and debris flew.
"Then it just stopped. It got real quiet. We waited a few minutes and then opened up the bed and we saw daylight," she said.
In Glade Springs, Va., 69-year-old Shelby Lester says the sky had a funny yellow tint and she told her husband, Fred, "There's a tornado coming."
They ran to a small bathroom.
"We just started praying," Lester said. "The house was swaying."
Truck driver Tom Rose was left shaking his head Thursday when recalling how the night before his tractor-trailer was blown off the road as he drove on Interstate 75 North in Ringgold, Ga., near the Tennessee line.
The 58-year-old was hauling a load of bleach and talking with his wife on his cellphone when he knew he was in "deep trouble" and hit the brakes.
