All of her life, Shannon Duett was told tornadoes sound like a freight train. But the night a deadly tornado ripped through Hamilton in April, all Duett heard was a “deep, low, continuous rumble of thunder that never stopped.” Moments later, she, her husband and their two young children would be ripped from their mobile home and flung into the air.
Calling the fact that they survived a miracle is an “understatement,” she said.
Change of plans turned world upside down
When she was 16 years old, Duett worked as a waitress at a steak and seafood restaurant in Columbus. One night, while carrying an entire tray of food, she bumped into a stranger. The tray went flying and the stranger, an 18-year-old Justin Duett, ended up with steak and fish all over him.
Later that night, he came back and asked for her number. That was 10 years ago. Married for four years, they have two daughters, Peyton, 4, and Sophie, 2.
For the last five years, they had been renting a mobile home in Hamilton in Monroe County but were planning to move to Ocean Springs.
That Saturday, April 13, they were going to meet with a Realtor there but Justin works on a land oil rig in Texas and had come home that week with a hernia. Surgery was scheduled for the upcoming Tuesday so the couple postponed their trip.
Instead, they went to Sam’s Club in Tupelo, about 30 minutes up the road, to get groceries. Once they got home, they played outside with their girls and two dogs. Throughout, Shannon was checking the weather. She’s a self-proclaimed “weather nerd” and likes keeping an eye out for storms.
The couple stayed up late that night, watching movies in bed while Shannon had a Facebook live of a Tupelo meteorologist on her phone. Around 10:45, Sophie came in their bedroom asking for juice. When Shannon went to the kitchen, she saw “absolutely beautiful” lightning, continuously striking nearby. She took a picture.
A tornado had just struck in Starkville and the storm was heading to Aberdeen, nearby but not close enough for the family to be alarmed. Then, Peyton came running down the hall, crying and saying she was scared. In an instant, Shannon knew something was wrong.
Back in the couple’s bedroom, she told her husband, “we have to go. Now.” It was 11:13 p.m. The children sat in the middle of the bed as Justin put on a pair of orange shorts. Shannon was standing on one side of the bed, Justin on the other. The TV went black. Then they heard the cinderblocks under the home move, the wind rushing. The sirens began to wail.
“Grab Peyton and hold tight please,” Shannon yelled to Justin. She grabbed Sophie and put the toddler’s head under her shirt.
‘I held on as tight as a I could’
Telling herself she had to protect her daughter, Shannon pulled the little girl against her, wrapping as much of her body around her as she could.
“I held on as tight as I could,” she said.
The tornado ripped the couple’s bedroom wall off the mobile home. Looking up, Shannon said she saw inside the monster.
“God, it was so beautiful. I know that’s ironic but it was really pretty.”
In a post she later wrote, Shannon described what she saw. “It was beautiful. It was so gray and looked so soft. You could see black-like globs which were debris. It was still lightning back-to-back, so it would light up the tornado.”
Justin was holding Peyton. The next moment, everything “exploded,” she said.
She remembers flipping backward, then seeing green. She was in the grass in the backyard, near the woods. Sophie was still in her arms. Shannon began running, screaming for her other daughter and husband.
The 4-year-old popped up out of the grass and ran, barefoot, toward her mother. Blood was streaming down her face.
“Justin,” she thought. “Where was he?”
Shannon scanned the yard for her husband as the family lab, Skye, ran up to her, barking and licking. Then Shannon saw Justin’s orange shorts.
“I feel like everything came down and crashed,” she said. “I couldn’t breathe because he was laying perfectly on his stomach and he wasn’t moving.”
The dog then ran to the front yard, next to a motionless Justin.
“I thought he was gone,” she said.
‘I’m over here, I can’t move!’
Shannon picked up the girls and ran with them to her car. The windows in her car were blown out but she knew there was a Minnie Mouse blanket in the trunk. If she kept it open, they would be protected from the pouring rain. And they wouldn’t see their father.
She put the girls in the car and then ran to her husband. The entire time she was saying, “This is a dream, this isn’t happening, come on, wake up.”
Reaching her husband, Shannon began screaming his name, telling him to get up. He came to. But Justin couldn’t feel his legs. He couldn’t move. Shannon tried dragging him but to no avail. He told her to leave him, take the girls and run.
She grabbed the girls and ran down the half-mile driveway, screaming for help, carrying both of them until Peyton wanted to get down and run. All three of them were barefoot. Shannon said she now knows they were in shock.
They reached the closest neighbor and were rushed into their storm shelter. Shannon was hysterical, she said, but the girls were quiet. Shannon kept telling the neighbors that her husband was hurt, begging them to help. The neighbor sent her two sons into the storm to find Justin.
Justin was laying in the same spot, debris all around him, when he saw headlights. He screamed, “I’m over here! I can’t move!”
The two rescuers put a tarp down, loaded Justin facedown in the back of their pickup and drove him to Shannon and the girls. Because of downed power lines, ambulances couldn’t get to them but could reach the corner gas station. The guys who rescued Justin drove him to the station while Shannon and the girls rode in another pickup.
Once at the gas station, Shannon’s landlord went to hug her. It stung. So, the woman lifted up the back of Shannon’s shirt. She told Shannon it was “no big deal” but then turned her around to show the medics.
As Shannon tried to get in the ambulance to go with her husband, an EMT grabbed her by the shoulders. “There is a hole in your hip and something sticking out of your back.”
Parents in intensive care; daughters safe
Once at the emergency room in Columbus, nurses scrubbed Shannon’s back to get her ready for surgery. Screaming from the pain, Shannon begged them to stop. For the first time, she felt every single one of her injures.
A pole had gone through her armpit. A two-by-four piece of metal was impaled in her back. Something — to this day she doesn’t know what — made a 10-inch circle on her hip, ripping away her flesh. In total, she had 74 staples up and down her body.
She woke up the next morning in the Critical Care Unit.
Justin was also in the CCU. He had a broken back and a broken neck and a gash in his forehead. He had 41 staples starting at his neck and going down his back and six staples in his forehead.
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Peyton had a concussion, a black eye and scratches. Sophie had a few cuts and bruises, including a cut above her right eye from the pole that went through her mother’s arm. Both girls were discharged from the hospital that night.
Their parents had a long way to go.
Road to recovery: ‘Tired and exhausted’
In the two months since the tornado, the family has physically begun to heal. But Shannon said they’re all “tired all the time and exhausted.”
“It’s hard to explain,” she said. “I never want to go through it again though.”
Justin had his neck brace removed this month. He told people it made him feel like a giraffe. He’s supposed to walk with a cane but doesn’t always use it like he should, Shannon said. His left leg is numb and drags behind him when he walks. But he’s walking. He’ll likely be in physical therapy until the end of the year, Shannon said.
They think a dresser in the bedroom hit him and knocked him unconscious, causing him to let go of Peyton. The dryer was lying next to him when Shannon found him. If the rescuers had moved him any differently, Shannon fears he wouldn’t be alive today.
Shannon had a skin graft done on the wound on her hip. She wrote on her Facebook page “Jesus be some saline.” Justin jokes with her that she looks like a “shark snack.”
Moving to Ocean Springs has been put on hold. Because of Justin’s physical therapy, the Duetts need to stay close to home. They couldn’t find any available housing in Hamilton and stayed with Shannon’s mother and stepfather for about six weeks. They recently moved to a house in Caledonia.
Peyton will start kindergarten in August. She has post-traumatic stress disorder, Shannon said, and cries anytime there’s a storm.
“If it thunders, she just goes into hysterics,” Shannon said. “She remembers everything like I do. I wish she didn’t but she does.”
Sophie, the “firecracker” of the family, crouches down when she hears an airplane.
One of the family’s two dogs, a great Dane named Tank, didn’t survive.
The tornado was an EF2, according to the National Weather Service, and claimed one person’s life that night.
On Thursday, according to the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency, a federal disaster declaration signed by President Donald Trump authorized aid to eight Mississippi counties following storms and flooding in April, including Monroe County. The assistance, however, doesn’t include aid to individuals.
The day before the tornado, Shannon quit her job at an insurance agency because her new hours conflicted with the girls’ day care. Justin is taking leave under the Family Medical Leave Act but they don’t know when either of them will be able to go back to work.
Anticipating the move to Ocean Springs, Shannon canceled the family’s renter’s insurance a couple of months before the tornado. She’s been back to the site countless times and was able to salvage Peyton’s Christmas stocking. Everything else is either gone or damaged beyond repair.
“We’re blessed and we’re sad at the same time,” she said. “Everything we had is gone…it’s crazy. There’s nothing left.”
Friends, family and strangers have rallied around them, bringing them food, making donations and hosting fundraisers. Without them, Shannon said she doesn’t know what her family would have done.
She marvels at the fact that her family is alive and believes God kept them safe. Months later, she’s still not sure why.
“I don’t know what his message was to us but it’s something,” she said. “He could been a little more subtle, like sent down a bird with a letter from Harry Potter.
“We’re here for a purpose we just don’t know what that purpose is yet.”
by Sarah Fowler (2019, June 24) Mississippi Clarion Ledger
