ELKVILLE -- A year ago today, the residents of Chamestown Road on Elkville's north side were perhaps forever changed.
An EF-4 tornado, packing peak winds up to 180 mph, roared through the peaceful neighborhood just prior to 8:30 p.m. on Feb. 28, 2017. The longest-track tornado in the region in more than a quarter century, it had proved itself a killer in Missouri in causing the death of 24-year-old Perryville, Missouri, resident Travis Koenig.
Koenig had the misfortune of driving his pickup southbound along Interstate 55 when the tornado crossed the highway, sucking him out of the truck and depositing his body in a field east of the interstate.
A friend who was with Koenig survived. Koenig was the only person killed by the tornado, while 12 others in Missouri and Illinois were injured.
The Red Cross reported 162 homes suffered at least some damage along the twister's 50-mile-long damage path, with 61 destroyed.
"I want to forget it and move on," said tornado survivor and Elkville resident Nadine Lacy, now 80 years old. "It was a horrible, horrible 2017. I lost my son in December along with everything else that's going on and I want to move on."
'I remember screaming'
Lacy's former home at the corner of Chamestown Road and Lacy Road, a place that roars frequently with Amtrak and freight train traffic on the nearby rail line, was destroyed in the tornado.
A quaint place with a red roof and seven shade trees was reduced to rubble in seconds.
"My daughter, Donna Waller, lives right behind me across the tracks," Lacy said. "She has a full basement and she called me and she said 'mom, we're going to have some bad weather, come on out here and get in the basement.'"
Lacy told the Du Quoin Call her son, who was handicapped, was having a medical test the next day. She told her daughter she would go over to her son's house and stay with him.
Ten minutes after hanging up with her daughter, Lacy went to her kitchen to take her medication prior to leaving for her son's residence.
And then she heard it.
"While I was at the sink, it sounded like a train to start with," she said. "But I knew it wasn't and I started into my bathroom as I didn't have a basement.
"My husband always told me that if there was ever a storm, get to the bathroom and get to the tub and pull whatever you can over you."
But she never made it in time, managing to get two feet from the bathroom door when the tornado hit. She did later make it into the bathroom, but the wind had mostly subsided when she did.
"I tried to hang on to the wall, you can't hold on to the wall," she said. "But I was doing whatever I could."
Lacy said her feet were bouncing on the floor "like I was floating," but she kept hanging onto the wall.
"Stuff was hitting me in the house and something hit me upside the head," she said. "I don't know what it was. It didn't really hurt. It hit hard, but it didn't really hurt."
"I remember screaming," Lacy added. "I never screamed so loud and so long in my life."
After the tornado passed, Lacy remained trapped in the remains of her home while nearby family members rushed to help her.
Her son-in-law and two grandsons eventually rescued her by gaining entry through a spot formerly occupied by the bedroom wall.
"There was no wall there, they just came across and I tried to get out of the bathroom, but the door wouldn't open all the way," Lacy said. "So, I finally pushed the door to where I could squeeze out and I felt air."
Lacy's son-in-law and grandsons found Lacy some shoes to wear as the tornado took the house's flooring and left only the floor joists remaining.
"Everything in my bedroom was gone," she said. "My bed was about three or four feet from the bathroom door, but (the tornado) didn't take me."
'I wanted to run'
Lacy said the first thing she wanted to do after getting out of her house was run.
"I couldn't run anyway, but I wanted to run," she said. "My son-in-law said 'you can't. You have to go slow because there's wires down everywhere."
In the end, Lacy only suffered three bruises and a blood clot on her neck where she was struck by the unidentified object. She returned to the site of her former home every day to watch as the storm's aftermath was cleaned up.
"I sat in the car all day long every day," she said. "I wanted to watch them clean it up. I didn't want to come back a month later and everything gone and it hit me in the face.
"I wanted to face it every day and deal with it."
'I have never heard such force in my life'
Lacy said she cannot recall how long her experience with the tornado lasted. The National Weather Service, after completing its storm surveys, determined the tornado spent an hour and two minutes on the ground after spawning at 7:55 p.m. 4.8 miles west-northwest of Perryville.
Other survivors, who declined to be interviewed for this story, have previously said their experiences lasted generally less than a minute.
"It felt like a long time," Lacy said. "But, I'm sure it didn't last but a few seconds. I tried to make it to the bathroom from my kitchen and I didn't make it in time.
"I have never heard such force in my life."
Lacy described the tornado as "an extremely powerful noise" and credited God for still being alive today.
"Holding onto the wall didn't save me," she said. "He did. He kept me down.
"That tornado took everything out of my bedroom, even my floor, my roof, and left me right outside the bathroom door. He left me here for a reason."
'I never want to go through anything like that again'
In the days and weeks that followed, the residents of Chamestown Road picked up the pieces of their shattered homes and faced the long, arduous task of deciding whether or not to rebuild.
"I guess stubborness," Lacy said, when asked why she decided to stay and rebuild. "I lived in my house for 50 years and this area is my home and I wasn't going to leave it.
"My neighbors were all coming back and it was a good group here."
Lacy said her grandson found her wedding rings in the mud of her yard the day after the tornado. Her China cabinet - which serves 12 people and not only survived intact, but its contents were miracuously undisturbed by the storm - remains in the living room of her new modular home as a monument to resilience.
"I never want to go through anything like that again," Lacy said. "I would never wish it on anybody or anything because the first four or five nights after the tornado, when I turned out the lights to go to sleep, I could hear that tornado and I could feel the force."
Lacy also showed a bit of humor when asked what the future holds for her.
"If it happens again, I'm going to buy a motor home and the tornado will have to find me," she said with a laugh.
