A walk-in cooler was the only piece left standing of Chuck’s Dairy Bar diner in Rolling Fork, Mississippi, after a massive twister (Pictures: Facebook/Manda Boo/AP)
A group of restaurant workers survived a deadly tornado by sheltering in the establishment’s walk-in refrigerator.
The owner of Chuck’s Dairy Bar in Rolling Fork, Mississippi, rushed seven other workers into the fridge as the twister swept through.
Striking at 200mph and measuring about a mile in diameter, the tornado on Friday night obliterated the popular diner. The only piece left standing was the gray walk-in cooler. Pieces of wood, metal and mixed debris were scattered all around it.
‘Thank god we’re alive,’ owner Tracy Harden, 48, told ABC News’ Good Morning America. ‘But also we’re so devastated by the loss.’
To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web
browser that
supports HTML5
video
Tracy Harden (right), the owner of Chuck’s Dairy Bar, hugs Barbara Nell McReynolds-Pinkins, a cook near the walking cooler in which they took shelter as a tornado hit and destroyed her restaurant (Picture: Getty Images)
Harden said she only had about one minute of a warning that the twister was heading their way.
‘I got 22 text messages back-to-back from my sister and my daughter in Vicksburg and they both said, uh, it was just, there’s a tornado down, get to a safe place,’ Harden said.
‘And at the same time, my teenage cashier came running towards the back of the building saying my mother’s on the phone and she said there’s a tornado down and at that point, most of us were towards the back of the building.
‘And the lights flickered and I just hollered “cooler” and my husband opened the cooler door and started shoving us in.’
Tracy Harden told her employees to take shelter in a walk-in cooler as the tornado approached (Picture: Getty Images)
Restaurant workers survived a fierce twister that killed 26 by hiding in store’s walk-in fridge (Picture: Facebook/Chuck’s Dairy Bar)
Harden, her husband and their six employees made it into the fridge. Harden’s husband saw that the roof of the diner was gone as he shut the door of the cooler.
‘He looked up and he said, “I see the sky,”‘ Harden said. ‘And so that let us know that this was way worse than anything we could have imagined and the roof was gone.’
After the twister had passed, one of the workers made a path through the debris and all eight of them emerged.
The tornado hit the town of Rolling Fork, Mississippi, on Friday night (Picture: Facebook/Manda Boo)
Chuck’s Dairy Bar was a mainstay in the town of Rolling Fork, Mississippi, for 60 years (Picture: Facebook/Chuck’s Dairy Bar)
The diner had served the town for more than six decades.
‘It’s more than a business, it’s my community,’ Harden said.
Twisters killed at least 26 people, injured dozens others and displaced thousands of residents. They also hit the neighboring state of Alabama.
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.
A walk-in refrigerator was all that was left standing after a massive twister tore through.