By LES HIGH
Terry Waddell was huddled on the floor of his mobile home praying with his wife and daughter when he saw something that will haunt him the rest of his life.
As he looked out his window, he saw his neighbor’s doublewide mobile home as it was being carried away by this morning’s tornado.
“The tornado picked it up and it was spinning in the air,” Waddell said. “It was as high as the treetops. It went off over those woods. The tornado was tearing it apart as it was taking it away. ”
Waddell said the man and woman who lived there were tossed from the mobile home, their bodies landing just down from his front yard. Both were killed instantly, he said. A child was thrown out of the mobile home as it crossed over nearby woods.
“The child was hurt real bad,” Waddell said as he looked toward the floor and shook his head. “I don’t know if he’s going to make it. He’s in bad shape.”
Also across the street from his house, Waddell looked out to see Darryl McNair emerge from his crushed mobile home.
“He was in a daze,” Waddell said. “He didn’t even know what had happened to him.”
McNair said that intervention from God – and his bed, which was between him and the rubble of his mobile home – saved his life.
“I thought I was dead,” McNair said.
His mother, Lillie McNair, who lives not more than 200 feet from her son, said she was on the phone when she heard what sounded like a train coming. The tornado spared her home. She wasn’t aware of what happened until she looked outside and saw Darryl staggering toward her house, bent over in pain.
“I told him God spared his life,” Lillie McNair said. “God has given him another chance. This is praying time.”
Darryl McNair was treated at the hospital and received several stitches.
Waddell said his family had no warning of the impending catastrophe. “We were asleep and we heard this noise and the trailer started to shake,” he said. “It didn’t last a minute. It was here and it was gone. My wife and my daughter, we got on the floor and prayed. God spared us.”
“This is a small neighborhood; everybody knows everybody,” he added. “I still can’t believe it happened. Everybody is in shock.”
Norva Waddell, Terry’s brother, said the storm came over his house and was gone in “maybe 10 to15 seconds.” It ripped the carport from his home and blew down a fence.
“I looked up and it was swirling over the house,” he said. “My daughter and my grandchildren live right behind me. I thank God that tornado didn’t pick them up and carry them away.
“It’s so sad about those children that got killed,” he added. “I was over there visiting those people yesterday. It was a beautiful day. We were on their front porch.
“I used to care about material things, but today, they don’t mean a thing,” he said.
The Waddells live off Old Lake Road, the first area hit. Norva Waddell said he had talked with people who had seen the second site near N.C. 87 just to the north.
“Those were brick homes,” Waddell said, “and they told me they were obliterated. There’s nothing there.”