15 minutes in hell at the heart of a tornado

Rod Pace, a hospital emergency services manager in Joplin City, Misssouri State, has just finished work on Sunday evening. He was about to stay for another 15 minutes to wait for bad weather to pass before going home.

>> Vortex of horrors in America

From the second floor of the hospital building, he saw the storm approaching. Rain and cyclone began to form from about a mile away.

Suddenly the glass of the door next to him - glass plates held with magnets weighing 50 kg - were torn apart. Pace was sucked out, then stuffed inside like a cloth doll, while his hand still clung to the iron doors.

A woman in Joplin collected souvenirs from her brother's house before the second storm hit.
Photo: AFP.

He ran into the inside of the hospital for shelter. A moment later, he heard a roar. Pace and a colleague tried to hold the door, but it bounced.

" I heard about the tornado, people say it's like a breathing building ," Pace told the Boston Globe. " That's true."

Meanwhile, the headmaster of the high school in the city heard that his school was destroyed after the graduation ceremony. Joplin High School hosted a ceremony at South Missouri University. Principal Kerry Sachetta is one of nearly 100 people still in the university campus when a hurricane happens. They shelter in the basement.

When the hurricane passed, Sachetta received a message informing him that his school had been badly damaged. The roof of the audition room flew away, the window burst open, his office lost its roof. Trees outside the school were broken. Two churches across the street "completely disappeared". Sachetta was stunned to see Franklin's technology center nearby as if it had been bombed.

At the same time when the whirlwind happened, Wohlford and his pregnant girlfriend and their two young children rushed to the Walmart supermarket to shelter. Luckily for them, the toy rack collapsed in part, made a tent, sheltered them. " It's 15 minutes in hell, " Wohlford said. "We are buried."

Their whole family was then taken to the hospital. Here, the school's bus fleet also carries injured people.

After the storm passed, Kelly Fritz and her husband scoured the warehouse. They quickly realized that nothing could be found in it. Their children went around the area and found every house destroyed."My son carried dead children in his arms when they came back," she said. "My husband saw two or three bodies on the ground . "

The cyclone-resistant area in the United States. Graphics: AFP.

A series of tornadoes swept across Missouri and neighboring US states over the weekend, leaving 116 people dead and hundreds injured. The most heavily damaged place is Missouri's Joplin City. Officials expect the number of people killed will increase, as an entire area of ​​120 square kilometers is destroyed. They are also concerned about the risk that other whirlwinds are forming.