Tuesday Recap

Tuesday night after the storms had passed through Memphis, Jason texted us to make sure we were okay. At 6:59pm, he texted Steven to tell him that they had had a brush of the storm but that the big portion was just about there. At 7:00pm the tornado hit Union University. We tried to text and call Jason to find out how he was doing, but he never returned our calls. We talked with other Union parents and were told that no cell phones were working. Then we heard that eight boys were trapped in a building. When we heard the Kevin Furniss was one of them, we assumed that Jason was with him. We were invisioning debris up against a door and when the debris was removed -- the boys would walk out. A little while later we received a call saying that all the boys had gotten out of the building safely. We were feeling pretty good about the situation. At 10pm we left for Union. On the way, we drove through heavy rain and then passed the section of interstate fairly near Jackson where semis littered the highway. When we got to Jackson, Mike Golding called us and agreed to meet us at the entrance of the university to show us where to go. He took us to the site of the rescue, where we quickly found out the rescue effort was still in progress. They told us that one student was still buried and it was our son. At this point it was 11pm and raining very hard. We watched from about 50 feet away. After a while the rain let up. The men were using a back hoe to lift cement off the pile of rubbish, then a chainsaw followed by a pick ax or sledge hammer. A little after midnight they were able to get Jason out, put him on a board and quickly rushed him to the ambulence and off to the hospital. A two-story building fell on these guys and not one of them had head injuries! Yesterday we found out that Mike Golding heard the man in charge say just after we got there something like this, "Looks like the second storm is about to hit and we're going to have to shut down the rescue mission." Shortly after he said this, the rain intensity greatly decreased. Someone later said that they were watching the radar and when the storm neared Union it split, avoiding the university. Wow! Prayer sure changes things! God is so good and so compassionate.