Wayne County, Mo., family caught in path of powerful storm Wednesday

SILVA, Mo. -- When Sharon Russom woke up on the muddy ground Wednesday afternoon, halfway between her Silva, Mo., home and the storm cellar where her family had tried to take shelter from an approaching tornado, she feared the worst.

Two large trees, ripped up by their roots, now lay in the yard in front of her, where her son and soon-to-be daughter-in-law had stood moments before.

"I just knew we'd lost her," Russom said of Samantha Sherman.

The tornado that struck Wayne County around 4:30 p.m. Wednesday is credited with injuring three people and damaging 15 to 20 houses, with at least five destroyed, according to officials. It left a path of destruction about two miles long.

The Red Cross, National Weather Service and State Emergency Management Agency were doing assessments Thursday to determine the size of the tornado and the extent of damage.

The Russom family saw the funnel cloud approaching Silva, and their shelter, about a 100 feet away, had seemed so close.

Trees were ripped from the ground as they tried to cross a fence between the two locations.

All four members of her family lost consciousness, Russom said. When they woke, Sherman lay curled in the fetal position, trapped between the two trees.

Only her feet were visible, her fiance, Kallen Russom, recalled Thursday, standing on the road near the fallen trees. The root wad from one of the trees stands shoulder high.

Kallen had also been pinned, his shoulder dislocated.

"She was trapped the worst," he said.

The weight of the trees was cutting off her oxygen when she woke, Sherman said.

"I had my head under one tree, my hair wrapped around it, then another tree hit it," she explained. "I was praying, 'Please, God, don't let another hit me.' I would have been killed."

Kallen's father managed to lift the weight of the trees from the pair. They were taken by ambulance to Poplar Bluff Regional Medical Center. They returned home by early Thursday morning, Kallen's left arm in a sling and Sherman walking slowly and with a limp. Sherman said her hip and back are injured, and there is a knot on her head.

Russom was relieved Thursday. Everyone is safe and their home was not damaged, she said, unlike those of Sherman's family in Joplin.

The tornado "was blowing everything away," Russom said. "Why it didn't blow us away, I don't know. We're lucky."

The Lacey family, whose home once sat on a street behind the Russoms, were not.

Neither Jeremy nor his wife, Lacy, were home or injured, but witnesses say their mobile home was lifted treetop high before it was slammed to the ground a few feet away.

The home lays on its roof now, with the walls and flooring broken out. A section of living room floor and carpet about 20 feet high leans against a nearby sycamore tree.

Five large trees lay uprooted in the yard, but the sycamore survived, saving the home of the Smiths next door, who were taking shelter in their basement.

"If it hadn't been for that old sycamore, that trailer would have been right on our house," Harold Smith, 87, said from his back yard Thursday morning. "It was quite a shock to come out and see that trailer here in the street."

The Lacey home appeared to be the only one destroyed in their section of Silva, while damage to other homes only 50 feet away in the small neighborhood seemed to be limited to the roofs.

Family members were shocked to find that two boxer puppies and their mother survived the destruction of the Lacey home and were later found in the neighborhood.

Trees have fallen into homes in other sections of Silva. No information was available at press time about the third person injured, except that the injuries did not appear to be major.

Residents say all of the streets were blocked by fallen trees shortly after the storm passed. Emergency workers and volunteers responded quickly, they say.

"There's a good group of people in this community," said Dan Montgomery, a cousin of the Laceys, whose home outside Silva was not damaged. "They all band together and help each other out."

The Wayne County tornado also destroyed at least one home off Highway 49, about halfway between Ellsinore and Williamsville, said Wayne County Emergency Management Agency Director Eric Fuchs.

Fuchs believes it is the same tornado that destroyed homes in Ellsinore, Mo.

"The best we can tell it went in a straight path, picking up and setting down again," Fuchs said.

Fuchs watched from the Wayne County Health Department at Greenville, Mo., as the tornado crossed U.S. 67.

"It was massive and very broad," he said.

The west side of Wayne County also suffered heavy wind damage, with a large number of trees covering Highway 45 and Route AA for a time, he said.

Several people reported nearly being hit by falling trees, Fuchs said, including a person stopped on a road in a vehicle with trees falling around the vehicle.

Golf ball size hail was reported at Mill Spring at 4:19 p.m., according to the NWS.

Pertinent address:

Silva, MO