When the lights at Chuck’s Dairy Bar started flickering and the skies suddenly roared, Tracy Harden knew the tornado predicted Friday night in her small Mississippi town was going to be a lot more dangerous than she thought.
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She shouted “Fridge!” and with her husband and employees, she ran to the huge rectangle of gray metal that ended up saving nine lives.
A little earlier, it had rained a little, a little windy, the sirens hadn’t sounded. So “we were not overly worried,” she told AFP on Monday in Rolling Fork, cap on her head, from the land on which her establishment stood.
The tornado that struck Mississippi on Friday evening for more than 150 km killed at least 25 people and caused immense damage, according to the authorities of this southern state of the United States.
The cook, Barbara Nell McReynolds-Pinkins, 52 – ‘Miss P’ as she is affectionately known – had just finished preparing a steak with chips and salad for a customer when things suddenly changed.
“It was terrifying,” she told AFP, still trembling. The sound of the wind, the lightning, the rain.
On her phone, Tracy Harden, 48, receives messages from relatives, warning her of an exceptionally violent tornado.
“The lights flashed, I screamed fridge,” she describes. But even before her husband grabbed the refrigerator door, the room was plunged into darkness.
“He pushed us into the fridge and I was shouting everyone’s names to make sure we had everyone,” she adds, unable to contain her emotion.
The wind is so strong that her husband almost loses control of the door. But they absolutely have to fold it down to protect themselves while keeping it barely ajar so as not to be blocked inside if the storm were to drag on.
At that time, “he said: I see the sky. It meant that our roof was gone,” says Tracy Harden.
For a long moment – impossible for the two women to remember how long this ordeal lasted – the nine are huddled together, pushed towards the metal shelves filled with milk and meat.
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“We are agitated in all directions, the fridge moves, we shout, we cry, we pray. And suddenly it just stopped,” says Ms. Harden.
Her husband tries to open the door, which seems stuck. She calls the 911 emergency number, they are screaming for help hoping someone will hear them.
And that’s where the customer for whom Miss P cooked the steak comes in.
“He had broken his arm and somehow managed to clear the debris in front of the door. He opened it and got us all out,” Tracy Harden said gratefully.
Outside is desolation. Around them, all the buildings were blown up, flattened. The two motels that stood near the restaurant and which also belong to Tracy Harden and her husband have disappeared.
“God saved us” and Tracy Harden was his instrument, breathes Barbara Nell McReynolds-Pinkins.
How did the restaurant owner have the presence of mind to think of the huge refrigerator as a shelter?
“I’ve always heard that if you’re in a restaurant and there’s a fridge, go to the fridge. It just came back to me,” she said, tears streaming down her cheeks.
For Tracy Harden, it is still too early to think about the aftermath, insurance, reconstruction. “It’s the least of our worries” in the face of the devastation and the human impact of the disaster, she explains.
But what is certain is that “we will be back”, and on the same location, she said.
As for the fridge, “we’re going to cover it with bronze, we’re going to make it all beautiful!”, she adds, laughing. “He saved our lives!”