Photo: kdvr.com
One man from Ottawa, Douglas County, Kansas, is counting his lucky stars after coming face to face with a powerful tornado, having his own car hurled at him and surviving to tell the story.
Terry Seymour was on his way home when he got a text from his wife that there was a tornado warning for the area. He thought he still had time to get home, but in less than 10 minutes, he drove straight into the EF-3 tornado that hit Douglas County last week – and which became an EF-4 only a short distance farther.
Seymour tells KDVR that his initial reaction was one of panic. He pulled up by the side of the road and got out of his car, a Jeep Liberty that’s now seen far better days, and tried to seek refuge in a nearby ditch. He realized he was still in danger, so he (wrongly) assumed he’d be safer if he went back to his car.
“At that time, it felt like it would safer at the Jeep, having at least a little bit of a wind break because, even halfway down the ditch, I was still getting clobbered with the winds and the rain,” he recalls.
As he was making his way back to the Jeep, he saw the car become airborne and coming straight at him.
“I saw the Jeep lift off the ground, and it went over my head, and my first thought was, 'This is just like in the movies.' It was pretty brutal, pretty violent,” Seymour says.
The car came crashing down on his leg, breaking his shinbone. The man says he immediately knew it’d been broken because, when he tried lifting his leg, it just hung there, floppy.
When the wind died down, a fellow motorist rushed to his aid and comforted him until medics arrived. Seymour has had an iron rod inserted in the lower part of the leg and is expected to make a full recovery. He remains upbeat about the accident, knowing it could have been much worse – especially if he’d had his family with him.
Seymour tells KDVR that his initial reaction was one of panic. He pulled up by the side of the road and got out of his car, a Jeep Liberty that’s now seen far better days, and tried to seek refuge in a nearby ditch. He realized he was still in danger, so he (wrongly) assumed he’d be safer if he went back to his car.
“At that time, it felt like it would safer at the Jeep, having at least a little bit of a wind break because, even halfway down the ditch, I was still getting clobbered with the winds and the rain,” he recalls.
As he was making his way back to the Jeep, he saw the car become airborne and coming straight at him.
“I saw the Jeep lift off the ground, and it went over my head, and my first thought was, 'This is just like in the movies.' It was pretty brutal, pretty violent,” Seymour says.
The car came crashing down on his leg, breaking his shinbone. The man says he immediately knew it’d been broken because, when he tried lifting his leg, it just hung there, floppy.
When the wind died down, a fellow motorist rushed to his aid and comforted him until medics arrived. Seymour has had an iron rod inserted in the lower part of the leg and is expected to make a full recovery. He remains upbeat about the accident, knowing it could have been much worse – especially if he’d had his family with him.
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