Tornado Terrorizes Breckenridge

Katie

What started out as probably the most normal day of the school year quickly turned into the scariest for many people across the town of Breckenridge. Residents of our town started preparing for a tornado when a large storm developed around 5:00 on Wednesday, April 9.

Bailee said, “It was scary and I feel bad for the people whose homes got messed up. I’ll keep praying for them and I hope we don’t have another one.”

The Airport Road, or County Road 150 located towards the south of town, was badly damaged. Many roofs were torn off and walls were damaged but the worst of all the damage was at the end of the road. The Breckenridge airport was severely damaged as well as the home of one of our very own classmates.

Eli, a seventh grader at Breckenridge Junior High, and his brother and mom  were literally trapped under their house after the tornado blew through. Jon, Eli’s dad, was at work down the road when the bad weather first began building. Eli’s brother, Ethan (a freshman) remembered the words of his teacher, Mr. Moore, who just days earlier had advised his students to get into a bathtub for safety during a storm. Following this advice, Ethan led his younger brother and mom to the bathroom. As soon as Eli’s foot stepped into the tub, the house started sliding. The trailer house rolled over into a nearby shed and a smaller trailer home before landing in its final resting place. While this was going on, Jon was trying to get home to his wife and kids, but when he did arrive his family was buried under four feet of debris. Jon scrambled through what used to be his house to get his family out and rushed to the hospital, where an ambulance met them down the road.

After this happened, some people were wondering how it felt to be in the house  while it was rolling and what it was like to be buried underneath it. Eli said, “With all the adrenaline flowing through your body, you don't even have time to be scared.” With all that happened to this family, they still kept a positive attitude through the whole thing.

Besides this tragic event, many other people on the airport road were scared for the safety of their family and friends. Miranda also lives on the Airport Road and has a story to tell.     

“I was at my new house in Caddo and when we came home, we were stopped by a highway patrolman. When we drove down the road we saw that some of the houses were destroyed and we were scared. Our huge willow tree in our front yard was totally knocked over. Our neighbor said as soon as he saw our trampoline flying over his house, he took over.”

We could all learn a lesson from what the storms brought with then on that Wednesday. That lesson is that ultimately earthly possessions do not mean anything. What matters most is your family and friends

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The Dickey family inspects damage left from the wake of the tornado as Jeremy rushes to shut off the home’s water supply.

Photo courtesy of msnbc.msn.com