A four-month-old boy (left) survived being tossed by a tornado that struck his family’s mobile home in Clarksville, Tennessee (Pictures: GoFundMe)
A four-month-old boy who was tossed from his family’s mobile home by a tornado was discovered alive on a fallen tree.
The infant’s father tried to grab his bassinet as the tornado struck their home in Clarksville, Tennessee, and ripped the roof off, but it was also sucked up.
‘He was just holding on to the bassinet the whole time, and they went into circles, he said, and then they got thrown,’ his girlfriend, Sydney Moore, told WSMV on Thursday.
At the same time in another room, Sydney jumped on their one-year-old son but the walls collapsed and they were trapped underneath. She was able to free them from the rubble and they searched for the infant for 10 minutes in the pouring rain.
‘I was pretty sure he was dead and we weren’t going to find him,’ said Sydney.
They found him lying on a tree.
‘He’s here, and that’s by the grace of God,’ the mother said.
Sydney’s sister, Caitlyn Moore, wrote on a GoFundMe page: ‘We are told that he looked like he was placed on the tree gently. Like an angel guided him safely to that spot.’
Caitlyn said the tornado that ripped apart their trailer on Biglen Road on Saturday ‘picked them up, threw them, picked them up again, and then ended’.
‘My sister had to push the trailer off of her and the 1 year old, Princeton. Her 4 month old son was also thrown multiple times,’ she wrote. ‘It took the effort of the emergency responders as well as my sister and her fiancé to find my nephew.’
Caitlyn added: ‘Lord, the 4 month old had to have his ear glued from a cut.’
Sydney’s fiancé suffered a broken arm and shoulder but ‘luckily everyone came out with minor cuts and bruises’, her sister shared.
A tornado that was part of a massive storm system struck Clarksville, Tennessee, on Saturday (Picture: GoFundMe)
The family lost their home, car, baby formula, diapers and wipes and clothing, and are missing one of their cats. Their rental company has put them in a hotel for a month.
As of Thursday afternoon, the GoFundMe page had raised more than $23,000.
The family’s survival was an uplifting story in an otherwise tragic storm event that killed six people in the state including a mother found still cradling her two-year-old son in Madison, a neighborhood just north of Nashville.