READYVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — Rutherford County officials confirmed an EF-2 tornado with winds up to 130 miles per hour ripped through the Readyville area early Saturday morning.
One Readyville woman who survived the storm told News 2 she and her husband are lucky to be alive after they were trapped inside their house as the tornado ripped through the family’s home, leaving nothing but destruction and devastation.
“I had my eyes shut. I just prayed. I just prayed,” Becky Tilford described the moment the EF-2 tornado touched down. “We sat down. We heard the roaring coming over and it was roaring and we came over here and as soon as we sat down and covered up, the house started shaking. You could hear the wind blowing, and when that roof went off, hail and debris, and everything was hitting us in the head.”
Tilford’s home that’s been in the family for decades, is now completely gone.
“This is it. I mean, it saved us for some reason I have no idea why we’re here. Still don’t,” she said.
Tilford said the tornado lasted about two minutes. Once they were able to get up to safety, they couldn’t believe the damage spread across what used to be their home.
“This wall was the kitchen over there, the dining room and the back wall is on the ground, and that’s it. As I said, we’re still in shock a lot, I mean, every morning I get up and you don’t have a home to go to. What do you do?” Tilford said.
One thing she’s grateful for is all the help from people in the community, and many others who have come from surrounding counties.
“Everybody has been so great. The volunteers, everybody. I mean they came through here yesterday asking what do you want out of the house, they got it out for us, put it on the front, dug it out,” Tilford said.
Now, Tilford says she’s still in a state of shock and doesn’t know where to go from here.
“I’m still processing. Still trying to figure out, still trying to see what I can salvage, what we’re going to do. We don’t know, we just don’t know,” Tilford said.
Most importantly, Tilford and her husband miraculously walked out of the tornado alive and uninjured.
“I’m happy to be alive, lucky to be alive, yeah. I should be dead. What we went through, we should be dead,” Tilford said.
