As residents of Cooke County cope with the loss of life and home in the Valley View community, families are also sharing stories of survival and hope during Saturday night’s devastating tornado.
Pastor Joshua Fowler's only thought as the tornado ravaged his family home on Love Trail was to pray.
“We get up under the stairs and pray,” he recalls. “And then the house went boom – like hit by lightning or something.”
The roof lifted off their house. Glass and debris rained down on his son’s crib and his wife’s bed, where they laid just moments before. Huge steel beams – torn from a structure across the street – smashed into the house like arrows.
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“That was the scariest thing I’ve ever experienced,” Fowler said. “We were loud. Just crying out to God to do something. And it seemed like forever, but all of a sudden, it lifted. And all we could do was say, ‘Thank you, Jesus.’”
The family was hosting relatives from South Africa and Florida for the Memorial Day holiday weekend. Fowler, who runs Awake The World Church from the property, was also planning fellowship on Sunday.
“Today, there would’ve been about 30 or 40 people in our living room,” he said.
To Fowler’s surprise – everyone inside made it through the storm without a scratch.
“I’m thankful that we’re all safe and we’re all here,” he said. “This is all material, but this is what matters the most – our family that we have and our children.”
Fowler’s home sat just across the field from where a gas station on Lone Oak Road had taken a direct hit from the tornado, as upwards of 80 people took refuge inside. While there were numerous injuries, no one was killed at the gas station.
Further along Lone Oak Road on the west side of Interstate 35, dozens more homes took the brunt of the storm.
Brenda Snow recounted getting a text alert on her phone—literally seconds before the tornado started moving her double-wide from its supports.
“I could feel the floors vibrating underneath me. I told my daughter let’s go let’s go let’s go,” she said.
They didn’t even have enough time to get to their storm shelter just steps outside her front door.
“It was trying to suck my closet door back open,” she said. “If my daughter had tried to walk out, she would have been sucked out the window.”
Snow spent most of Sunday sweeping glass and cutting branches just to get in and out of her home. She’s thankful it’s still standing – but her neighbor wasn’t so lucky.
Amber Lidster’s home is now a pile of rubble. She has lived on the land since she was a little girl.
“Since 1984, we’ve been here. And it’s all wiped out in a split second,” she said.
Family friends had helped Lidster, a single mother, continue living on the property in a relatively new home she had purchased five years ago. She and her kids weren’t home at the time of the tornado, but her dogs were.
“My two fur babies. I don’t know how they made it out, but they did,” she said.
On the other side of Lidster's home, her neighbor's 83-year-old mother was also the only one home at the time of the storm. Strangely, that house was spared despite being just steps away from Lidster's residence. The elderly woman was not hurt, though the home was lifted and moved off its foundation.
Now, Lidster and her family are salvaging anything they can find, including her father's ashes, which were kept inside a special Mickey Mouse-shaped silver necklace.
Lidster's neighbors have also been collecting old family photos that were strewn in the field behind them.
“It’s just the memories and the sentimental things that makes it so hard,” she told NBC 5.
Lidster said as devastating as this is for her and so many families, faith, and her community will be her calm after the storm.
“I’ve got God on my side. And faith,” she said. “I have faith in Him, and that’s who I’m leaning on. God and my family is all I can ask for right now.”
Lidster is encouraging North Texans to donate to local churches and other trustworthy organizations to help support storm victims.
“If you know anybody out here, don’t just reach out to them and ask what they need. Tell them you’ve got something for them because they’re so overwhelmed,” she said. “They don’t know what they need right now."
