Missouri tornado survivors share heart-wrenching stories of being hurled through windows, flooded shelters

IMPERIAL, Mo.– Ashlyn Carter-Lawson was at home with her husband and dogs when a tornado-warned storm blasted through Imperial, Missouri, on Friday night. 

She said she’d been tracking the storm, so she knew it was coming. It was when water started pouring into the basement where her family was sheltering that she became more concerned. 

Carter-Lawson said she came up from the basement to start saving some of the items in her home between the waves of the storm. 

“I thought maybe it was done,” she said. “That’s when ceilings started collapsing.” 

Carter-Lawson said she was fearing for her life as she and her husband gathered their dogs and made their escape back down to the basement. 

“We were pacing back and forth,” she said. “‘Do we stay here? Do we stay in the basement? Is the whole house going to come down?’” Those were some of the questions, Carter-Lawson and her husband were asking as the storms raged.

Eventually, she said, they made the decision to leave. 

“Driving through a tornado, you know, it’s terrifying,” she said.

In the days since the storm, Carter-Lawson said their home looks different. 

“The walls are demolished. The ceiling’s demolished. The floor’s ripped up,” she said. 

“It’s starting to hit me, that we lived through a tornado,” Carter-Lawson said. 

The National Weather Service is still surveying many tracks of damage in Missouri, but preliminary information indicates an EF-2 tornado passed near the western outskirts of Imperial on Friday evening. 

About a couple hours’ drive from Imperial in southeastern Missouri, the town of Poplar Bluff was also devastated by a tornado.

Poplar Bluff resident Arthur England was home that night, when he felt the devastating power Mother Nature could wield through a tornado.

“It picked me up in my trailer, threw me down, and then it picked me up the rest of the way and threw me out the window,” England told FOX Weather Meteorologist Ian Oliver.

England went on to describe the moment he found himself standing barefoot in the storm – hail falling all around him, flashlights piercing through the darkness, neighbors screaming.

Among the chaos, a preacher came up to England and advised him to let a police officer on the scene take him to the hospital. According to England, the preacher noticed he was in shock.

“It was something that I wouldn’t want to see nobody else go through it ever, ever again,” England said.

England’s two daughters came to meet him at the hospital, and once he was stable, all three returned to his home.

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What they found was the sobering aftermath of the Poplar Bluff tornado.

“Everything was demolished, like, cars on top of cars, houses on top of cars,” said daughter Lisa. “It was unbelievable. Debris everywhere. Like, everything just collapsed that we knew. It was like going into a war zone.”

Among the wreckage, was a seedling of hope, as the three were able to salvage England’s untouched phone, tablet and wallet. Other than that, all of his possessions were taken by the storm.

To help England get back on his feet, his daughters have started a GoFundMe page, where donations can be made.