‘We’re gonna get hit’: As NC residents recall tornado horror, they count their blessings
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Tornado hits Rocky Mount, Battleboro, NC
An EF3 tornado touched down in Rocky Mount and Battleboro, North Carolina, July 19, 2023, heavily damaging a Pfizer product facility and injuring more than a dozen people. Here is coverage from the tornado in Nash and Edgecombe counties.
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Evelyn Powell stood on the porch of what used to be her house, under what used to be her roof, smiling at the devastation at her feet Thursday.
When the tornado struck Battleboro on Wednesday, her husband jumped up from the sofa, where he’d just heard the warning on the local newscast.
“He opened the door, and he could see the tornado,” said Powell, an Edgecombe County commissioner. “And when he shut the door the tornado blew the roof right off. And didn’t take him with it.
“That’s why I can smile today.”
A steeple blown off the church
A powerful tornado cut a path more than 16 miles through Edgecombe and Nash counties on Wednesday afternoon. Areas including Battleboro, Rocky Mount and Dortches saw widespread damage and numerous injuries. No fatalities were reported.
In Battleboro, the twister blew the steeple off Morning Star Baptist Church and pulverized the houses around it.
The Rev. Elbert Heath stood beneath the damaged church in a cowboy hat and tank top, exhausted in the 90-plus degree heat now afflicting his flock.
“I want to make sure our spiritual well-being is intact,” he said. “This can be a draining experience, mentally.”
Huddling in a closet
Hemal Desai was home watching Netflix when his phone flashed a tornado watch Wednesday afternoon.
”Who pays attention to a tornado watch?” he said in retrospect on Thursday, pointing where the storm ripped a hole in his roof.
All along Great Glen in Rocky Mount, the brick homes stood battered beneath 70-foot pines snapped in half.
The air smelled of pine tar as workers raked up a carpet of debris, including a set of patio furniture that flew 100 feet out of a screened porch that no longer exists.
Inside his storm-damaged house, Desai gave thanks that his baby was at day care and his wife was at work, huddling in a closet, warning him to get in the closet at home.
As the sky turned dark, he saw his own patio furniture flying in a circle.
His garage door got torn out of place and landed on his car. All across his yard, workers sawed up pines the size of telephone poles.
“There’s a hole in my roof,” he said, pointing to the garage. “I think the tree was flying around and punctured it.”
A damaged day care center
Carolyn Slade was watching over 64 kids at St. Stephen Loving Day Care when she heard the same warning: storm heading your way.
So she opened the door, and it flew out of her hand.
“You could see the funnel cloud forming,” said Slade, director of the day care. “It was like a whistle, a loud whistle. I told my husband, ‘We’re gonna get hit.’
Everyone took shelter and Slade prayed, “Lord, let this storm pass over.”
And it did.
The day care was a mess of tangled limbs, and the building took some roof damage, but everyone inside was spared.
The twister cut a narrow path from the Pfizer plant on U.S. 301 through Belmont Lake Golf club community — its path of destruction often no more than 100 feet wide.
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But all through the cul de sacs along the fairway, houses stood with pine branches and trunks through the roof, in the worst cases sliced in two.
The tornado pounded a small cemetery on Battleboro Road, crushing dozens of headstones, some of them inscripted by hand.
The marker for Lizzie Drake, who died in 1953, lay beneath a trunk. It was marked, “At rest.”
Twisted metal in the fields
All through Battleboro, soybean and sweet potato fields sat strewn with twisted metal and chunks of insulation.
Down the road from Powell, the Edgecombe commissioner, her son was taking a shower when the twister sent three trees through his roof, forcing him to crawl out.
With her house a skeleton, Powell has already heard from insurance adjusters who called it a total loss that she will have to rebuild.
”I feel very blessed,” she said. “I woke up this morning knowing I could have lost a husband and a son. I guess the Lord wanted it that way.”
This story was originally published July 20, 2023 at 12:00 PM with the headline "‘We’re gonna get hit’: As NC residents recall tornado horror, they count their blessings."
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