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Seven seconds changed Loyal Winborn’s life.
Winborn was standing in his kitchen near Country Club Drive Saturday night when his weather radio blared a severe storm was seven miles out.
He told his children to grab their shoes so they could go to their neighbors. Plans changed barely seven seconds later when an EF2 tore through the northwest corner of Creston.
The tornado hit Winborn’s house and raised it off the ground.
“We heard a boom, and I just screamed, ‘Get to the closet!’” Winborn said.
In the air
Winborn’s girlfriend Staci and his two sons managed to get into the closet. As Winborn was trying to close the door, the roof to his house flew off.
Winborn, who is on Creston City Council and an instructor at Southwestern Community College, soon found himself in the air wedged between the ceiling and crook of the door.
“It ended and we all slammed down together and debris started raining through the house because we had no roof,” he said.
Winborn and his family went to their neighbor’s house, and five minutes after that, they started trying to locate friends and other neighbors.
Winborn said his house is a total loss. The plan now is to bulldoze it and start again.
Even with mother nature’s destruction staring him directly in the face, Winborn appeared optimistic.
“We’re all healthy,” he said. “We can’t complain at all for what happened. We are lucky. This stuff can all be replaced. If one of my kids got hurt, I wouldn’t be talking to you right now. I’d be a mess.”
••••••
One of the longest night’s in the lives of two girls started when they were relaxed and asleep in a dorm room at Southwestern Community College.
Caleigh Fowler, 18, of Legrange, Ga., and Sarah Sneed, 19, of Malvern were relaxed and asleep Saturday night in the upper level of their dormitory.
All of a sudden, Fowler realized the windows were starting to shake.
“Sarah, wake up!” Fowler screamed.
It took awhile for Sneed to wake up, then the power went out. The girls realized they had to get out of their room and to safety, especially when dorm alarms started blaring.
There wasn’t any time to even put their shoes on.
The tornado was starting to tear the corner of the roof off.
View from inside
Glass was shattering everywhere as the girls raced down the stairs. On the second floor, Fowler looked out the window.
“We see stuff flying everywhere, and like, you could see insulation and everything,” she said.
Fowler and Sneed finally managed to make it downstairs with other SWCC students. They sat on the floor and began to wait.
“It really didn’t, like, hit us,” Fowler said. “We were, like, really nervous and shook up about it, but we didn’t really know how it was going to affect us until after the tornado hit.”
Once the twister had passed, Fowler said there was a sense of calm. The girls ventured upstairs.
Aftermath
They couldn’t even get into the room where they had been only minutes before because there was so much damage and debris.
“I lost my computer, iPad, everything,” Sneed said. “I don’t have any more clothes.”
Fowler lives on another side of the building, and didn’t lose much of her belongings, but her car felt the brunt of the storm.
The power of the tornado moved it one space from where it was originally parked. The windows were also broken.
The two girls ended up eventually spending the night at a friend’s house.
“I was scared the whole night,” Sneed said. “I kept thinking it was going to come back.”
Fowler added, “Luckily, we survived it.”