Tornado Survivor: 'I Knew I Didn't Have A Whole Lot Of Time'
(CBS) -- A Rochelle resident describes the terror of Thursday's tornado to CBS 2's Suzanne Le Mignot.
Erin Johnson says she knew she had to drive fast in her gray Volkswagen into what used to be the garage.
"I saw it coming," she says. "I knew I didn't have a whole lot of time."
Arriving home, she ran into the basement and waited for about 10 minutes, "cowering" beneath a piece of furniture, "until it got quiet and I could see light under the door."
The house above her was literally ripped off of its foundation, though the wooden floor was left intact. The rest of the house, owned by her boyfriend Adam Cappel, is a mountain of twisted debris in a neighbor's yard.
"A storm is still a storm. You can't live your life in fear. You Just take it day by day. If it happens again, we do it again and rebuild again," he says.
Says Johnson: "You realize how priceless the people and your life is."
To give you an idea of how powerful this tornado was, Cappel says a woman contacted his family after finding one of his signed paintings. She lives in Marengo -- about 54 miles from Rochelle.