Sue Banks was a survivor of the Windsor tornado. She recounted her experience with the event in an article from the Windsor Historical Society. She, a friend and both of their children were caught by surprise in their home by the tornado. This was their experience:
“I could feel my arm bent tightly around a child’s head, and I fought to keep that intense pressure from forcing me to crush my own child’s skull. I was so scared I was going to hill him, but I couldn’t release my arm any more than I could relieve the searing pain in the twisted knee of my right leg. I was sure that leg was breaking. Still I screamed and could not hear my own voice. One more ounce of pressure, and I would black out. Was it my fate to die beneath the rubble of my house? Let the storm cease, Lord! Let the walls stop falling.
And the walls did stop and the blackness abated. It had lasted maybe fifteen seconds! An eternity. I don’t know when I knew it had been a tornado but by then I understood.
I knew we were in the house and yet suddenly I could see the outside, the clouds, the rain, a brightening sky. Where seconds before there had been kitchen counters, windows and ceiling, now above me was sky.
We were wedged underneath my butcher-bloc kitchen table top. It was slanted like a lean-to and enclosed us in a triangle. On top of it was the sodden, collapsed plasterboard wall, and on top of the wall was the sodden, wet sleep-sofa. The cumbersome piece of furniture was braced on one end by the kitchen stove. Had it landed six inches shy, the full weight of that heavy sofa would have crushed us.
I was trapped and unable to move. But Marilyn, with a strength that she later explained as the adrenaline-induced ability of a terrified mother, used her back and shoulders and lifted debris to free herself. As she crawled out, I straightened my cramped body, unbent my twisted knee, and raised my weight off the crying children beneath me. Their terrified cries reassured me they were alive. I tried to calm the children by saying repeatedly, “It’s okay. We’re alive.” Then I couldn’t help but quip, “This is Connecticut! This isn’t Kansas!”
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