LISA MARCHESONI, Senior Writer

County school bus driver Melissa Morgan felt the Good Friday Tornado “literally pulling the breath out of me” as she grabbed her 7-year-old daughter Anna to seek shelter at a Thompson Lane business.

“For the life of God, I don’t know how we made it from the car,” Morgan said last week.

She and her screaming daughter, and her friends, Madie Smith, 9, and her 6-year-old sister, Peyton, jerked open a door at W.R. Starkey Mortgage and huddled inside a bathroom with a woman and her teen daughters without any covers like a mattress.

“I put my body over them and the toilet started shaking,” Morgan said, adding she locked her arm into the handicapped rail.

Her terrified daughter said, “I hope I’m alive tomorrow,” but Morgan simply told her to “just keep praying.”

Emergency Medical Services spokesman Paramedic Randy White said Morgan saved her life and the life of her daughter and friends by getting out of the car and seeking shelter inside an interior room with no windows.

After the tornado passed moments later, Morgan found the tornado moved her car 25 feet away. She found all the windows shattered and a cable wrapped around it.

“There’s no way we could have survived,” a thankful Morgan said.

“They would have been injured severely if they had not gotten cover,” White said.

The Good Friday Tornado killed mother Kori Bryant, 30, and her 9-week-old daughter, Olivia, and injured husband and father, John Bryant, when they sought shelter inside their Haynes Drive home’s bathroom.

“Obviously, in some cases, it doesn’t matter where you are,” White said, but added he believed people who took cover in the middle of the house sustained less injuries. “By far and away, the more critical injuries were the people outside rather than inside.”

Paramedic Chris Clark, who supervises the EMS Special Operations Response Team, was one of the rescuers freeing trapped people from the debris piled around them.

“A lot of people did take cover,” Clark said. “That’s probably what saved them. We didn’t pick up anybody that was seeking shelter inside that was critically injured, other than the Bryants.”

It seemed like many people planned ahead and sought shelter in bathrooms with no windows in the center of the home. News warnings and radio weather radios helped as well.

A father and daughter taking shelter suffered non-critical injuries when their Bushnell Court home in Lakebrook subdivision off Compton Road collapsed atop them. It took rescuers about 45 minutes to free them.

“Being prepared was probably one of our biggest success stories,” Clark said. “If this happened at night, we would have had a different story.”

He credited responders and city and county workers in saving lives as well.

“I’m just glad I live in Rutherford County,” Clark said.

White said 23 ambulances responded at one time.

“People taking it to heart saved lives,” White said.

National Weather Service meteorologist Tom Johnstone agreed.

“I talked to a lot of people who survived under stairwells,” Johnstone said. People were thrown in yards and walked away. There were incredible survival stories.

“I think people heard the warning and listened to weather radios,” he added. “People knew where to go. Many people I talked to survived because they managed to get their family in a survivable place in their home.”

The best place is a lower level interior room, ideally in a bathtub, the meteorologist recommended.

Unbeknownst to Morgan, sheriff’s Detective Jason Mathis and his wife, Cindy, who are friends of hers, were inside the same building refinancing their home loan.

Mathis learned about the impending tornado and told people in the building to find a place in the center of the building with no glass.

“We huddled in a closet with two wooden doors,” Mathis remembered. “There were seven of us in the closet. We didn’t get a scratch on us.”

Once the storm was over, he went door-to-door and found Morgan and the other survivors. He and a volunteer firefighter turned off the gas in the building that lost the second floor and sent survivors to safety at Stampede across the street.

His wife’s car and his sheriff’s vehicle holding his drug dog, Lucy, had been damaged. Lucy survived without a single scratch.

Morgan and her daughter sustained bruises and Peyton Smith suffered a scratch.

“Thank God he watched over us,” Morgan said.

Lisa Marchesoni may be reached at 869-0814 or at lmarchesoni@mufreesboropost.com.