‘Like a scene in a movie.’ This 4-month-old was swept up by a deadly tornado and found alive on a downed tree

By Jillian Sykes and Ray Sanchez, CNN

(CNN) — By the time the tornado siren sounded one week ago, the roof of Sydney Moore’s mobile home in Clarksville, Tennessee, had been sheared off and her 4-month-old son Lord sucked up by the twister.

“There was no warning,” said Moore, 22, who immediately moved to shield her 1-year-old son, Princeton, with her body.

Moore’s boyfriend, Aramis Youngblood, 39, rushed to protect Lord, who was sleeping in a bassinet swept up in a swirl of wind and debris Saturday evening as a series of powerful tornadoes and storms tore through the state.

The walls of Moore’s mobile home came down next. The roar of shredding winds was punctuated by pounding rains. Youngblood, reaching for the bassinet, also was lifted off the ground and hurtled through the air, Moore recalled.

Moore, cradling her 1-year-old son, climbed out from beneath the remains of the crushed mobile home. “My kids never cry, they’re such good babies,” she said. “I was trying to get us out. He wasn’t even crying.”

Youngblood, his shoulder dislocated, spent an agonizing 10 minutes searching heaps of debris before finding Lord, crying and lodged in a fallen tree about 30 feet from where their home once stood, Moore said.

“It was like a scene in a movie,” Moore said. “I remember seeing Aramis walking up in the pouring down rain, clothes ripped, with Lord in his arms.”

A single tornado traveled more than 40 miles

The storms in Tennessee, where at least two tornadoes touched down last Saturday, left a large swath of destruction and displaced thousands, including Moore and her family. Hundreds of homes were destroyed and at least six people were killed, including a mother and her toddler.

Parts of Hendersonville and the Nashville suburb of Madison were slammed by a tornado with peak winds of 125 mph, according to the National Weather Service.

A single tornado traveled nearly 43 miles from the Clarksville area in Montgomery County to Logan County, ripping apart homes and businesses, tearing out roofs and windows, flipping over cars and trucks, and littering roads with downed trees and debris across both counties.

Moments before the Clarksville tornado touched down, Moore, Youngblood and the boys were relaxing in her mobile home.

“We just heard the wind start picking up and then something put us into fight or flight mode,” Moore said.

By the time the tornado had passed their corner of Clarksville, their belongings were gone and their car was crushed by fallen trees, which also prevented first responders from reaching the family. They walked for more than a mile for help.

“There was another woman that helped me carry Lord while we tried to find paramedics,” Moore said.

Clarksville Fire Rescue Lt. Steven Bryant was among the first responders in the area that day. He recalled hearing a group of people shouting and running toward the commotion. A police officer had Lord in her arms. Bryant and the officer crouched under a downed utility pole to reach each other. The baby had a laceration on his face.

An ambulance headed down a nearby road, and Bryant had someone flag it down. “I mean, what perfect timing,” he said.

When Bryant reached the ambulance, he said, the baby had gone quiet.

“I could tell he was still breathing but he was covered in mud and had lacerations to the right side of his face,” the lieutenant said.

A pair of medics examined the baby as Bryant left the ambulance to speak with the mother, who was with her 1-year-old.

“She was visibly shaken,” Bryant said of Moore. The medics later handed Lord to his mother.

“There was so much destruction, and it’s a miracle that people weren’t more seriously injured than what they were,” said Bryant, a Clarksville native who has lived in the north Tennessee city 45 years.

Moore recalled the medics handing Lord back to her, telling her he is a “perfectly healthy baby.”

‘I believe in guardian angels and miracles’

Caitlyn Moore has set up a GoFundMe page to help her sister and two nephews.

“I wasn’t expecting any help, honestly. It’s really so comforting,” Sydney Moore said. “Every possession that I’ve ever had is gone.”

Caitlyn Moore wrote she was thankful most of the family escaped with minor cuts and bruises. Lord has a cut on his ear treated with skin glue. The family is temporarily staying in a hotel.

“We are told that he looked like he was placed on the tree gently,” Caitlyn Moore wrote. “Like an angel guided him safely to that spot.”

In an interview, Caitlyn Moore said it’s a miracle Lord is alive. Among the remains of her sister’s mobile home, she said, was a box containing the ashes of their mother, who died last year.

“We found her ashes completely undisturbed, untouched,” she said. “Everything was still in the box. It was perfect.”

“I believe in guardian angels and miracles,” Caitlyn Moore said. “I believe that our mom was probably the one that placed my nephew Lord in that tree safely.”

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