‘She saved our lives’: How a panicked driver saved a family from a deadly Florida tornado caused by Milton

() – As flying debris was absorbed by a tornado forming before Michelle Westfield’s eyes, it became clear that there would be no escape if she drove her car forward on a highway in St. Lucie County, Florida, last week. . It would be a death sentence.

He slammed on the brakes, put it in reverse and backed up as far as he could, all the while yelling and honking on Winter Garden Parkway, a residential road in Lakewood Park, last Wednesday. At that time, a couple heard Westfield’s screams while they were outside recording videos of water pooling on the road.

“I hear her shout ‘get into your house!’ and I was like, oh my God, this is bad,” Brandi Clarke told affiliate WPEC.

As Hurricane Milton made landfall on Florida’s west coast, the state’s east coast was experiencing a burst of tornadoes. Westfield was heading home to the Spanish Lakes community when he encountered a tornado that would eventually destroy homes on the highway where he had to back up his car.

The Spanish Lakes tornado killed at least six people. The Westfield house was left intact, although she lost the garage and shed roof, but she is grateful to be alive.

After hearing Westfield’s warning, Clarke told WPEC that she and her husband quickly ran inside and grabbed their children. As soon as her husband closed the door, the entire house shook with the force of the tornado, she said.

After the incident, Clarke was so shaken that she posted it on her Facebook in an attempt to find the “heroine” who tipped them off.

“She saved our lives,” he told WPEC when they met for the first time in Clarke’s driveway on Monday.

“As much as she doesn’t accept it, she really did it,” he told the news outlet, who was there for the couple’s first meeting.

“I keep telling people I didn’t do anything heroic. “I panicked, but my panic alerted people to come in, and that’s a blessing,” Westfield told .

Before the traumatic experience, the 55-year-old Westfield woman had been sheltering in place at work for nearly three hours with her daughter and grandchildren, while her phone rang with tornado alerts every few minutes, she said.

When she hit the brakes, a truck driver behind her started honking, wanting to pass her.

“I started honking my horn, like, ‘don’t go, don’t go!’” Westfield said. “He passed me, I put the car in reverse and just accelerated back as fast as I could, screaming, and kept going until I saw (the tornado) was veering to the left.”

When it seemed safe, Westfield took his daughter and grandchildren to his home, which is around the corner from where he would later encounter the tornado forming on Winter Garden Parkway. He then began his journey home to Spanish Lakes, which is about three miles away, but only made it about a mile until he saw debris flying through the air.

Westfield accelerated in reverse until she reached the end of the road, desperately trying to get home to her husband, with whom she stayed in line during the chaotic car ride. He quickly realized that he couldn’t make the curve he needed to get home.

“I looked and the gas pumps and the roof were no longer at the gas station. I looked to the left and two 18-wheelers had flown out of the Dollar General parking lot,” Westfield said. Still on the line with her husband, she yelled at him to take cover and get down on the ground as he heard the approaching tornado.

“He listened to me go through it, and I told him I was safe, I was over it, and then he walked right into our community,” she said.

Westfield was still in a panic, desperately worried about her family, when she decided to take refuge at a nearby pizzeria called Nino’s, she said. The owner and his son then offered to rescue her husband from their home and went to check on her daughter and grandchildren, she continued.

In her Facebook post, trying to find Westfield, Clarke said: “I swear I heard you scream come in.”

“Within seconds of running into the house and grabbing our kids off the couch our house started shaking, my ears started popping, the dogs started howling and whining,” Clarke wrote. “For 15 seconds my world froze as I heard the loudest thud go through the house.”

Before last week, Westfield did not know Clarke or her husband. But he had seen them before, because he had passed her house “a million times” on his routine trips to his daughter’s house, he said.

After seeing Clarke’s Facebook post, the two met in person, and their bond was already palpable. Westfield and Clarke intend to remain friends, and have already made plans to go camping together and have a barbecue in the driveway of the house where the fateful encounter took place before a tornado devastated the houses across the street.

“I’m a woman who panicked and went into fight or flight,” Westfield said. “I could have been home at that time… So obviously I had to stop by their house at that time and alert them to come in with their children.