Caruthersville man recalls surviving F3 tornado

For Charles Cummings of Caruthersville, April 2 was not unusual. At least not at first.

There was a thunderstorm warning in effect for Pemiscot and surrounding counties, but that didn't faze him much. Growing up in Missouri's Bootheel had made him callous to severe weather in the springtime.

So he spent the early evening like any other, just tidying up around the house.

Even when balls of hail began falling, town emergency sirens began emitting their drone and TV weather personalities gave more and more urgent instructions, Cummings just went about his business.

"I guess I just ignored it because in the past, tornadoes have always just passed by Caruthersville," he said. "So this time I didn't think too much of it because I thought it would be like all the other times. It was going to pass us by."

This wasn't like all those other times. At approximately seven o'clock, a category F3 tornado was cutting a swath through town. Cummings' Vest Avenue house was in its crosshairs.

"All of a sudden the house started shaking and I'm thinking to myself, 'I should have listened to those warnings,'" he said.

"I started running to the bathroom, and right then the wind just picked the walls up off the foundation. Everything in the house went up with it. I got knocked down into the bathtub by one of the walls. I knew it was bad so I just stayed in the bathtub because I remembered that was where you're supposed to go for safety if you can't get to a basement."

Cummings lay in that bathtub as debris swirled all around him.

"I could hear the tornado churning. It sounded like someone with a weed-eater," he said. "I looked up and I could see the debris collecting around the tornado, huge pieces of debris just picked up in the air."

Cummings said when the tornado passed by, the debris which had been flying a hundred yards in the air began falling back to earth. He was pelted by branches, wood beams and other projectiles. He just tried to keep his head low.

"When it stopped, I got up and I tried to run for help, but I only made it three steps before I collapsed. I just fell down to the ground. I couldn't even pick up my head so I just hid under a two-by-four and waited for someone to find me," he said.

The force of the flying debris had crushed the right side of Cummings' body against the bath tub. It had fractured his spine and cut a gash in his neck.

But this wasn't the most dangerous part.

As he lay helpless in the wreckage of what had been his three-bedroom home, he was struggling for breath -- and inhaling more dust, woodchips and insulation than oxygen.

When he heard voices, he said he summoned the strength to extend his arm through the debris.

Cummings' girlfriend, Sherron Mullen, had rushed over from her nearby home and saw his signal.

"He was trying to move his head and I just told him to stay still. We just sat and I held his hand and talked to him while we waited for the ambulance," said Mullen.

When emergency personnel reached Cummings, he was unconscious and barely breathing. They loaded him into the ambulance and tried several methods to restore his respiration. None worked.

Rescuers decided he needed an emergency tracheotomy. Paramedics worked quickly, puncturing his throat and pumping out the blood, dust and other material that was obstructing his breathing.

Cummings was brought briefly to Hayti hospital and then transported by helicopter to Saint Francis Medical Center in Cape Girardeau.

Recovery

For two weeks after the tornado, Cummings did little more than sleep and eat through a feeding tube. His entire body was swollen from his injuries and he only had the strength to speak for a few sentences at a time. He could not move his neck or raise his right arm, which had been crushed in his fall against the bathtub.

Rehabilitation has been a slow road. "For about the first week and a half they kept me pretty well drugged up. What I remember most is the doctors changing the tracheotomy tube about every day and me coughing all the time," he said.

But slowly Cummings gained enough strength to breathe on his own and eat solid foods. He's had a steady stream of visitors from home including his brother, James, his girlfriend, mother and the congregation of the Pentecostal Power Church.

On April 18 he walked for the first time.

Since then he's gone through daily physical therapy and can now raise his right arm above his head. He has enough strength to grasp a pencil and write. While he still wears a medical collar to stabilize his neck and gets around mostly by wheelchair, he says he's seen the progress.

"It's like you learn everything all over again. I remember the first day I had the strength to make a fist. It felt pretty good to do that," he said.

On Friday he was discharged from the hospital and will go to live with his brother in Hayti. He may not ever be able to return to his job at a granary, but for him that's not the most important thing.

Cummings said he's going to concentrate on making the most out of a life he believes was spared from nature's wrath.

"It was a miracle to survive something like that. Every now and then I can still feel the effects of that tornado," he said. "Some mornings I wake up and I can feel it doing it to me all over again. I wake up in a cold sweat. It really affects a person. I can feel the power of that tornado coming my way. I just thank God for protecting me."

tgreaney@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 245