FedEx Worker Miraculously Survives Tornado After Getting Trapped Outside
PAINCOURTVILLE, La. (CBSNewYork)-- A powerful tornado ripped through a Louisiana town, trapping a FexEx driver outside.
Roaring winds reached 140 mph as worker Kyra Johnson stopped to take video footage.
"I hope it doesn't come this way," she's heard saying.
But in just a few minutes, it would be barreling down on her.
"I had never seen the sky swirl so pretty and it was grey, but it was scary," Johnson said in a report by CBS2's Dick Brennan.
She drove into the parking lot of Sagona's Hardware and waited in her vehicle for a few seconds before deciding to go into the store. Johnson races from the parking lot, but when she got to the front of the store, the doors were locked, having nowhere to turn and only seconds to take cover.
"I just braced myself right here between the Coke machine. I wasn't even holding on. It was just to brace myself," Johnson recalled.
And then she took the full force of the storm. The coke machine toppled over, leaving her exposed to the upwards of 140 mile per-hour winds. Meanwhile, inside the store, workers were already taking cover.
"To be alive today, I'm thankful," David Sagona, the store owner, told CBS2.
Sagona made all his employees take cover as the twister ripped apart the store.
"As I was closing the door to the bathroom, my side wall got sucked out. I actually saw the sidewall get sucked out," Sagona said.
Incredibly, when the storm cleared and the dust settled, Johnson had survived, but how?
"God, there's no explaining it. God because after I saw the video, I didn't know what it looked like. I just figured I was in a tornado," Johnson said.
After Sagona and Johnson met, Sagona presented her with a t-shirt he had made for her. The shirt had a custom-made image showing the wreckage at the scene being held by the hands of God. The gift brought her to tears.
"You will always be part of our family," Sagona said as he hugged her.
"God had us in his hands the whole time," she said.
Everyone in the store also survived the tornado.