But first, the doctor pulled up a chair and told Mr. Paul went to a doctor at Missouri Southern State University to have him look at the bump on his head-his only injury from the disaster. A doctor with a hacksaw performed emergency amputations. Paramedics were arriving to take the injured to hospitals. Paul was reunited with his parents, who had driven from their home about 20 minutes away. He handed the register keys to his manager and told him he wouldn't be coming into work the next day. "That was the best soda I ever had in my life," he says. He picked up one of the unopened cans of Pepsi that littered the ground around him. Paul led a boy out of the store, the child said, "There's a dead guy over there." Paul checked the pulse of a man lying on the floor, then put a comforter over him so the children wouldn't see. Another Walmart employee wrapped trash bags around the children to keep them warm. Paul and his co-workers carefully placed blankets around the injured adults. Several customers appeared to have broken backs, including a woman with three children. No one knew how it had gotten there, and a few minutes later, it disappeared. The area reeked of propane and natural gas.Īmid the wreckage stood a dog, unhurt. "We're all going to be getting tetanus shots," Mr. The woman objected, saying the rag was dirty.
Paul found a rag and told her to apply pressure. One woman had a gash on her arm so deep they could see the bone. They handed out gauze and bandages from first-aid kits that had flown off the pharmacy shelves. Paul, whose father had been an Army medic, and a co-worker pulled injured people out of the debris. When I saw it rip off the front doors, I thought, this is where we're all going to die." "Just knowing that the hell that passed over us, the tornado, was gone and I had actually somehow made it. "At the point when the hail was hitting, I couldn't stop laughing," he said. He held a milk crate over his own head to protect himself from the hail.
He called them over and stood, holding one end of the broken piece of roof, so they could crouch beneath it. Paul saw a woman clutching a child near a shopping cart. He watched helplessly as a support beam fell onto a couple and their child only a few feet away, killing them.
Large pieces of metal framing toppled toward him, but a set of DVD display cases stopped their fall. The force of the tornado lifted the metal roof off the building and dropped pieces of it onto the employees and customers. Throughout the giant store, which stretches from 15th to 20th Streets along Range Line Road, somewhere between 100 and 200 people were trying to ride out the storm. He and his co-worker ran to the back of the store and dove into the electronics department, where about 30 people huddled. He stayed by the store entrance until the pressure of the approaching tornado sucked the doors off the building.
0 kommentar(er)
