NASHVILLE, Tenn. (CNN/WTVF) — Tennessee residents are picking up the pieces after deadly tornadoes ripped through the state. In Cookeville, the devastation is brutal. Eighteen people in that area are dead after the storms. Five of them are children. One family says they’re lucky to be alive.
A tornado ripped their teenaged daughter from the house, and threw her into the neighbor’s pool
Lauren Neal admits she doesn’t know exactly what she’s doing.
“They clothed us, they fed us,” said tornado survivor Neal.
But picking up what she can salvage seems to be a good start.
Tuesdays EF-3 tornado in Cookeville was relentless, flattening her home on Charlton Square down to the concrete foundation. Material things now don’t matter. Not after the chaos her family went through.
Lauren neal/family survived tornado: “Not sure how we survived and other people didn’t, but happy and sad,” said Neal.
She remembers seeing the warning. But by the time she got up to get a hold of her teenaged daughter, mother nature unleashed an unforgiving wrath.
“My daughter was in her room, and she has hearing problems, so she wasn’t wearing her hearing aide, so I had to yell really loud,” said Neal. “She can hear but not well. She sat up and next thing you know I was looking at her face and the whole this front of the house was gone and a door came and hit me and I was holding on to that door while getting hit with everything and things going and eating insulation and wood, thinking, ‘I don’t think I’m gonna survive this.'”
Neal ended up on top of her house with her dog on her lap. That dog eventually died. Her daughter, ripped away, survived, though, landing in — of all places — her neighbor’s pool.
A day later she’s back to what’s left of what she called home for 15 years. She may not know exactly what she’s doing, but expressing gratitude to a community is another start that seems to see no end.
“This community is amazing,” said Neal. “I’ve never had deal with something like this. There’s not words other than thank you but that’s not enough.”
Neal’s daughter only has minor injuries. The neighbors are okay too. They barricaded themselves in their laundry room.
