Two babies sheltering in a bathtub during the deadly tornadoes that hit Kentucky this month miraculously survived under the overturned tub after it was sent flying from the devastated home, their grandmother said.
Clara Lutz, who frequently babysits her two infant grandchildren – Kaden, 15 months, and Dallas, three months – put them in a bathtub with a blanket, a pillow and a Bible as her house started shaking from the tornado rolling through on December 10.
Her home in Barnsley, Kentucky, did not have a basement to shelter in.
‘I felt the rumbling. I felt the shaking of the house. The next thing I knew the tub had lifted and it was out of my hands. I couldn’t hold on,’ Lutz told Click Orlando.
‘I was looking everywhere to see where the tub may be. I had no clue at all where these babies was. All I could say was: “Lord please bring these babies back to me safely. Lord please, I beg thee.”‘
Lutz’s home was stripped down to the foundation in the chaos and she was hit in the back of the head with the tub’s water tank.
Officers found the bathtub in her yard, upside down, with the babies underneath. They had even stayed dry under the tub as it began to rain.
‘The sheriff come down, I got in the sheriff’s car right at the end of my driveway. They opened up the door and brought me Kaden, my 15-month-old. It wasn’t long after that they brought me Dallas, my three-month-old,’ Lutz said.
‘He had a big ‘ol goose egg on the back of his head. We didn’t know what was wrong.’
Dallas suffered a brain bleed from the effects of the storm and was rushed to Vanderbilt University Medical Center Nashville.
However, the bleeding stopped before Lutz got to the hospital, she told the news station.
The children’s parents live in the north end of the county and their home was nearly untouched by the tornado.
In Kentucky, state emergency management officials and the state health department have said that the current death toll is 78.
The governor, who noted that his staff believes there are an additional three deaths, said Saturday that all of the people reported missing in the state after the outbreak of tornadoes have been accounted for.
At least 93 people have been confirmed dead across five states after more than 40 tornadoes pummeled the region.
The December 10 tornadoes killed six in Illinois, five in Tennessee, two in Arkansas and two in Missouri.
Surveillance video showed a tornado tearing through a bank in Mayfield, Kentucky, when dozens of fatal twisters wreaked havoc.
The FNB Bank branch in Mayfield – the same Western Kentucky town where eight people died at a candle factory – was destroyed by a tornado on the same night.
Video from inside the bank shows Christmas trees and standee posters shaking from the wind as the twister approaches. The lights flicker off before the tornado rips through the lobby, ripping off the glass doors and sending a Christmas tree flying
