Tornadoes, Death, and Survival: Miracle Babies Live Through Tornadoes

Arkansas isn't technically considered part of the region referred to as "tornado alley," but we certainly get more than our fair share of these powerful, capricious storms. Two days ago one twister stayed on the ground in Arkansas for an astounding 120 miles through 6 counties and carved a mindblowing path of death and destruction. The town of Atkins, Arkansas, about 45 miles northwest of me, practically doesn't exist any longer.

I have a good friend in Iraq. He hadn't caught me online since the storms and actually managed to call me today - yes, he called me from Baghdad - to make sure I was okay, even though he knows I'm in Little Rock, an hour's drive south of the storm's path.

Friends from all over the globe have emailed, IMed, and called to make sure my family and I are safe. We're fine. I lost a few shingles in the storms that rocked our world Tuesday. They match the few I lost several days earlier when strong straight-line winds came through.

I take tornadoes seriously. I've seen firsthand what they can do. Little Rock was hit hard twice in the late 1990's by tornadoes, one of which leveled communities in the southwest suburbs of Little Rock, and another of which smashed a horrific swath through the Quapaw Quarter, little Rock's oldest historic neighborhood. There were a lot of poor people living in these areas, people without luxuries like renter's insurance. They lost everything, and there was no money for recovery. Years later they were still trying to put their lives back together. There are still homes that have not been completely repaired even a decade later.

I've seen twisters dip from the sky and my stomach has dipped and twisted along with them. Once, when I was a teenager, I was riding a horse in the country and saw a storm front to the north of me. The clouds looked ominous, so I headed for home. It wasn't raining where I was, but I could see that the rain was pretty powerful not far away.

To my horror a funnel cloud dipped down from that cloud, called a beaver's tail. I didn't just gallop home. My horse ran.

Tornadoes are the most capricious storms that have winds to blow. Miracles of survival and stories of bizarre damage seem to come from every storm. Truthfully, when they have the power to blow an entire house off its foundation leaving no trace behind, toss fully laden transport trucks around like plastic toys, and drive 2x4 planks through the trunks of 40-inch oaks, nothing short of caprice allows a jar of pickles to sit, apparently unmolested, on a concrete slab, or blows 40 year old letters hundreds of miles without damaging them.

The storms that hit Tuesday in Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky and Alabama were killers. More than 30 people died in Tennessee. The last news report I heard said we lost 13 here in Arkansas. Kentucky lost 7 and Alabama four. These deaths are the most in one day from a thunderstorm system spawning tornadoes in a decade.

Search and rescue operations lasted throughout yesterday. Rescue workers went door to door checking houses that were barely standing after the storms. They also walked around debris-filled lots where houses used to be and the fields near where houses used to stand. Many of these lots and fields were filled with toys. In Tennessee, searchers came upon what they thought to be a doll at first. The doll moved, though, and searchers realized they had found a living miracle. The eleven month old baby's mother was found in the same field. She did not survive.

This story is achingly familiar to me.

On the night of Friday, November 10, 1995, the National Weather Service issued severe thunderstorm warnings for Arkansas. The worst of the storms were supposed to hit Des Arc, my hometown, around 11:30 p.m. The storms moved faster than expected. Some families took cover. Others slept through the warning, only to be awakened by their windows breaking as the angry winds pummeled their homes.

At about 11:30, Jeff Calhoun called his father, Butch, because something large had blown up against his house. Despite the storm, Jeff's sister Heather and her husband Lance Stallings decided to drive over to Jeff's to check on things. When they turned up the country road leading to Jeff's house, Heather said, "Lance, stop. I can't see Donna's house." Rather than going on to Jeff's, the pair turned around to check on the home of Donna and Keith Walls. It was gone. Donna was Heather's aunt.

Lance and Heather stopped at a fish farm where several men were working and used a cellphone to call Heather's dad to let him know that his sister's house was gone. Then Heather and Lance returned to look for Keith and Donna.

Emergency and law enforcement personnel came to the scene despite the storm still thrashing around them. Most of the debris from the house was scattered in a wheat field northeast of the home site, so that is where the searchers began looking for the young family. A firefighter called to the others that he thought he heard an animal whining in a field of rice stubble to the west. Rice had been cut weeks before, but the field had not yet been readied for the next spring's planting.

The source of the cries was not a puppy. It was six-month old Joshua, face down in a tractor rut full of mud, water, and rice stubble, pushing himself up on his sturdy little arms and wailing. He had been there for 45 minutes or more.

The men and women who found the baby knew that he had to be suffering from hypothermia. A deputy sheriff wrapped the baby in his jacket and gave him to another searcher, who happened to be a cousin of little Joshua's on his mother's side. (We're all related in these small farming communities, especially when our families arrived together in covered wagons in the decades just before the Civil War.) Then, because the rain and wind still lashed them with the fury of the storm, the deputy led the baby's cousin through the field to a paramedic.

The paramedic, Linda McIntosh, had warm towels in her car. She stripped Joshua's wet, muddly clothes and wrapped him in the warm towels. Holding the baby in her arms, Linda got into the car of Des Arc's police chief, Leon Moon (a school mate of mine) and they rushed the baby toward the nearest hospital. They were met by an ambulance at the county line. The ambulance crew took the baby the rest of the way to the hospital.

When he reached the hospital, Joshua's body temperature was 90 degrees. His arms and legs were literally blue from the exposure. The trip to the hospital had probably taken the better part of 45 minutes, so Joshua's body had regained some of its warmth by then. He was probably only minutes away from death when he was found.

Meanwhile, back in the rice field searchers found Keith Walls about 10 feet from where the baby had been lying. He was dead. Donna's body lay a little further away. Along with the debris from their house, the family had been blown about 270 yards - yes, the distance of almost three football fields. All that remained of the frame house were a few scattered cinderblocks from its foundation. Many of the family's possessions landed miles away from their home.

Keith Walls was my cousin. When we were kids we roller skated at the rink his parents owned. It was the hot spot in our little community for kids who weren't yet old enough to drive but who were too old and too social to want to stay home on Friday or Saturday nights.

I saw my brother and sister the next day. We hugged a lot. We talked a lot about Keith. We all had good memories of him. He was a sweet kid, and he grew up to be a kind, compassionate, good man. We didn't know Donna as well. Donna was older. We knew Donna's family, though. There are a lot of Calhouns in the Des Arc area.

Josh is a sweet kid, just like his dad. Keith's parents have Josh, and he is a source of light to them. Both grandparents smile joyously when they talk about this miracle baby, who is now a teenager. Both the Calhoun family and the Walls family have a wonderful legacy from that tragic night.

Josh survived.