Couple rode out tornado in parkway bathroom
WTVA, MARY GRACE DISHONGH, CNN
By Gabe Mahner
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HOUSTON, Mississippi (WTVA) — A woman and her boyfriend sheltered against an EF-1 tornado in a roadside bathroom in Chickasaw County.
This happened to Mary Grace Dishongh and Blake Hatfield on Saturday, March 15 as they returned from Tupelo.
They received a tornado warning alert while traveling along the Natchez Trace Parkway.
Realizing their vehicle was not safe, they quickly sought out shelter. They then found a parkway bathroom stall at the Witch Dance site.
“Not ideal, not ideal to be trapped in the bathroom,” she told herself.
While inside, she had one thing on her mind: her children.
“That was probably the first time in my life where I’d really been like, ‘I may not make it home to my kids, and they’re so young that they will never understand why. There’s nothing you can tell them or explain to them of why we didn’t come home.’”
She recalled talking with her father on the phone during the storm.
“My dad actually, he was crying on the phone whenever he was talking to me,” she said. “He just kept asking me, ‘Are you still there? Are you still there? Are you still there?’”
Eventually, the storm passed and they got back in their vehicle.
“I’m not gonna lie, we probably went well over the speed limit…booking it off the Trace,” she said.
Reflecting on the entire situation, Dishongh is grateful they found a place safer than their vehicle.
Ultimately, the National Weather Service determined the twister touched down a few miles north of their hiding location, near Van Vleet, along the Natchez Trace. So they escaped it by a few minutes.
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