Tornado Survival Tips

Reader Contribution by Matthew Stein
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Darden describes a family of five who lived on a farm outside of Higdon, Ala., a small community in the northern part of the state. They had no storm shelter, but they did live in a home that he says was well built.

On Saturday, Darden and a partner visited the family. “The mother and three daughters were there at the time,” he recalls. Looking at the wall-free ground floor — all that remained of the home—”I introduced myself and said: Thank God y’all were not home. “Her response? “Oh, we were here.” With no storm shelter and nothing but a slab foundation left, “I really thought she was joking,” he continues. “I asked: Where were you at?”

She led the two men to a spot on the storm-swept slab, where nothing but a small patch of hardwood flooring and a scrap of carpeting remained — parts of each pulled up by the tornado. The rest of the flooring vanished into the vortex and hasn’t been found. The patch is all that was left of the interior hallway in which the family huddled. “They were not touched,” he says, in a voice tinged with amazement. “They were not sucked up. They didn’t have a scratch on them.”

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