March tornado in Monroe County flung woman into road as storm ripped apart her house
The late-night tornado was gone as quickly as it had appeared.
Felene Taylor heard the sounds of survivors stirring in the dark as she lay in the middle of Wolf Mountain Road surrounded by splintered boards, shards of glass, sheets of metal and soaking-wet insulation.
She knew right away something wasn't right.
"It was a sound in the distance, a roar. Not the typical cricket sounds you hear at night." As the rumble grew louder and near, she closed two bedroom doors and laid down in the hallway.
She had heard a tornado warning go off about 11:15 the night of March 31 and went to the front door to peer outside. She and her husband, who was in the hospital that week, often watched from their front porch on the hill as storms rolled in across low-lying farm fields.
"As soon as I did, it hit the house. It was there." The last thing she saw was the face of her furry orange cat, a pet she hasn't seen since, frantically scurrying by.
After traveling through McCormicks Creek State Park, where a husband and wife camping were killed, the tornado headed northeast. It tore the Taylor's ranch house at 9818 W. Wolf Mountain Road in half — the back portion ended up down the road and the front was carried south, its contents spread in a cornfield.
Taylor doesn't know how she ended up slammed onto the asphalt. "Stay calm," she told herself. "Stay calm. Is this over?" She couldn't comprehend what had happened.
"I knew I had to get up, or no one would know I was there." Her legs and left shoulder were broken, "but I didn't hit my head, and I wasn't impaled."
She called out for help. Her neighbor, Glen Collins, answered. Relief flooded over her. She heard others crying and screaming for help, finding out later that 12 homes along the road had been destroyed.
"Felene, don't move, don't move, don't move." He used a flashlight to locate her in the rubble, and helped her into his nearby house, which was badly damaged but still had part of the roof overhead. His wife wrapped a blanket around her; mud and insulation were in her ears and hair.
Collins went back outside to check on others.
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Fallen trees and debris kept first responders from getting to the scene quickly. The distant sound of chainsaws echoing assured them help was on the way.
It was about 2 a.m., she said, when Stinesville volunteer firefighters walked into the splintered scene. "About 3:30, the paramedics were at the door," Taylor said. "They came on off-road vehicles."
By this time, she was in pain, "feeling pretty bad." Medics stabilized her and administered pain medication before transporting her a mile-and-a-half down County Line Road, where three ambulances were parked, waiting.
A paramedic tracked down Taylor's daughter in Indianapolis. She got to her mom's bedside in just a few hours, and was at the scene with other family members after daybreak to search for possessions not destroyed.
"She told me later that when she got there, the house was all across the road. She said she sat there 10 minutes crying," Taylor said.
"I didn't know how you walked away from that," her daughter said, shaken.
"None of us knows how we walked away," Taylor responded.
Her husband, Stephen, had been hospitalized in Indianapolis with a serious infection. He had been delirious, and she hadn't had a conversation with him for days.
The night of the tornado, about 11 p.m., he called. She got out of bed to answer the phone. "He was lucid, and he sounded fine," she said. They talked a few minutes.
And then, the storm siren and roaring wind. And her retreat to the interior hallway.
"When I look back, if he hadn't called, I would have been asleep when the tornado hit. No telling where I would have ended up. I feel like maybe God put me where I needed to be to survive."
Taylor spent a month hospitalized, and several more continuing to recover. Her left shoulder is nearly back to normal after surgical repair. Next to Dr. Tim Steiner's scalpel-sliced scar is a tornado tattoo, a reminder of how scary, and precious, life can be.
The Taylors didn't consider rebuilding their 25-year-old home. They sold the five acres and bought a house on Main Street in Spencer. She misses the country.
"But like I told my husband, I'm not living on that hill any more."
Contact H-T reporter Laura Lane at llane@heraldt.com or 812-318-5967.
This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Wolf Mountain Road woman rebounds from tornado injuries
