Tornado survivor left twisting in the wind
It started with a series of dreams.
For three straight April nights in 2010, Corbin White of Yazoo County, MS, dreamt of tornados.
On April 24, White’s dreams turned into a real life nightmare.
“I started to look up the meaning of tornado dreams and it just meant there’s gonna be turmoil in your life,” White said. “Literally that weekend, I was in a tornado.”
That Saturday an EF-4 tornado with winds of up to 170 mph tore across northeast Louisiana and into central Mississippi killing 10 and injuring dozens more.
The National Weather Service describes tornados packing such force as, “devastating.”
White began her day at her boyfriend Nathan Pepper’s house near Yazoo City, unaware that she would face one of nature’s most powerful forces hours later.
“It was sunny and I wasn’t worried about it,” White said.
A little before lunchtime, White received a call from Pepper who was at work, telling her she needed to get downstairs into the bathroom.
White was home by herself and argued with her boyfriend that she didn’t want to be home alone if bad weather hit.
“I told him, ‘I’m going to your parents,’ and I just hung up on him,” White said.
White knew something was wrong as soon as she stepped outside to walk to her car.
“People say it’s eerie before a storm,” White said. “It was just gray and eerie.”
Once White was on the road, she realized she’d made a mistake leaving home.
“Nothing was moving. There were no squirrels, there were no people outside. I was the only person stupid enough to leave and drive,” White said.
A Living Nightmare
It didn’t take long for the weather to get ugly.
White got into downtown Yazoo when she began to lose control of her car.
“My car started skidding to the left and I felt my wheels come off the ground,” White said.
Powerful winds pushed White’s car off the road into a ditch.
White saw a gas station near where her car had been moved to and left her vehicle to make a run for the safety of the building.
She had no idea a tornado was bearing down on the ground she was sprinting across across.
Once inside the gas station, White and the gas station owner watched as the tornado tore into the space she’d occupied only seconds before.
“The awning over the gas pumps totally blew away,” White said.
The sound was even more harrowing.
“It sounded like a train was on top of my body. That’s how loud it was,” White said.
White doesn’t remember how long it took for the tornado to pass over the gas station but can recall vividly what she saw when she stepped outside.
“There was this shopping center across the intersection and the left and right sides of it were completely flat. It was like rubble,” White said.
After looking at the surrounding area, White couldn’t believe how the little gas station she and the owner had taken refuge in managed to hold up.
“It looked like a warzone,” White said.
Sifting through the wreckage
White managed to start her car but couldn’t drive to Pepper’s parents’ house because of debris covering the roads.
“I ended up at his brother’s house,” White said. “His brother was in the carport on the phone and I don’t remember it but he said I got out of the car, I was pale and I walked under the carport and he said I collapsed.”
It was the first moment White had been still since she left her boyfriend’s house earlier that day and the first moment she could begin to understand her reactions to the tornado.
“I was scared but I didn’t even have to think. It (my body) just went into survival mode,” White said.
White and Nathan’s brother Jared Pepper decided to head back to her house to see if there was any damage.
White saw a different world beyond Jared’s truck window.
The town was ravaged. Buildings that stood an hour ago weren’t there anymore and trees were down everywhere.
“People are literally coming out of rubble,” White said. “People were cutting through trees to try to get to places.”
White reached her boyfriend’s house and was greeted by Nathan.
“He’s standing there just looking at his back yard, and I just ran and hugged him,” White said.
The house went largely undamaged, but the rest of the neighborhood did not.
“There was this woman and her three kids that lived in a trailer down the street from Nathan and apparently the tornado picked up her trailer,” White said.
Corbin returned to Jared’s house while Nathan, Jared and a police officer picked through the rubble of the trailer to find the family.
Later that evening the brothers returned to White and described to her how merciless nature could be.
The mother didn’t survive, leaving behind a baby and two little boys who survived with injuries.
“He (Nathan) had nightmares about it for weeks,” White said. “He told me that her body didn’t even look human, it was so mangled.”
Afraid of the Wind
For weeks after the tornado, White saw a city struggling to pick up the pieces.
“They had called in the National Guard, there were Army tents set up everywhere,” White said.
Looking at White and Yazoo, both still haven’t made a full recovery.
“I’m still very much in shock and afraid,” White said.
The tornado winds physically altered Yazoo City’s landscape, changing White’s appearance as well.
“I literally lost a lot of weight after that because I was always scared. Every second I was scared that something was just going to drop out of the sky,” White said.
The dreams haven’t stopped either.
“I have tornado nightmares all the time, and I also think I have panic attacks,” White said.
White isn’t the only one still affected by the tornado.
She and Nathan have since broken up, but they still share an experience that will stay with them for life.
“He still will call me to this day in tears, like something just triggered him thinking about it,” White said.
Natural disasters often serve as an unfortunate reminder of man’s helplessness in the face of nature.
With each catastrophe humanity endures, a new level of respect for Mother Earth’s awesome might is realized.
“I am scared of Mother Nature every day,” White said.
With each day White deals with the memories she carries from that April afternoon a year and a half ago.
Dark clouds that once beckoned her and her family out to the front porch to watch the rain fall now usher her indoors for fear of what may come.
But those dark clouds and violent winds have made her hold those she cares about closer than ever.
“I’m very much more caring about each second of my life and each person in it,” White said.
In the journey of life, one will face many storms, literally and figuratively.
For White, this one is a storm she believes she’ll never fully recover from, but with a newfound respect for nature and a reinforced love for her family and friends, she moves forward.
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