By Carolyn Jones

The sounds of a twister are variously described as a throttling locomotive, the squealing tires of an 18-wheeler and whirring sirens.
Jeff Carman says it’s much worse, the most horrible sound.

During the Good Friday storm, Carman had one arm wrapped tightly around the door frame to his bathroom, while his other hand held on to the Diet Dr. Pepper he was drinking when the storm hit.

“I’m going to die,” he remembered thinking.

Following the storm’s howl was a peaceful silence. Carman opened his eyes to see a mass of fluffy cotton candy-colored insulation covering the floor. The trey ceiling in his bedroom collapsed on top of the bed where he had been sleeping minutes earlier. The kitchen window was blown away, the roof over the garage collapsed and his favorite recliner in the living room was crushed by debris.

“God moved him through this house to the safest place,” said his wife of almost 14 years, Emily.

She had been at work when the storm warning was issued. Before heading down with co-workers to the basement of the Pinnacle Bank, she called home. She knew Jeff would be sleeping because he worked the late shift. She insisted he pay attention to the weather.

“Something in her voice told me that I needed to get up, so I did,” Jeff recalled.

After the storm passed one of Emily’s co-workers offered to drive her home. The entire back of the house was gone and Emily could see that the bedroom ceiling had caved in. Her chest felt heavy with fear. Then she spotted him being helped from the debris.

Jeff escaped with just a cut on his arm from where he climbed through a broken glass door, but the house was destroyed. Around dusk the police finally allowed families and friends of the residents to venture down Penny Lane to help start cleaning up. Over the next few weeks more than 50 people came to help salvage clothes, pictures and anything else they could find.

“The police stopped everyone at the end of the street to ask who they were going to help and almost every person’s reply was ‘3215 Penny Lane,’ ” said Jeff.
The Carmans never lost faith and always had positive attitudes about the situation. They both said how amazing it was to see an entire community pick itself up by the bootstraps and start over. On Oct. 3, 2009 the couple moved into their newly remodeled home.

The Carmans are reminded daily about the tornado.

“Sure this put a kink in our lives, but we were so blessed and we are so thankful because not everyone was so lucky,” Emily said.