NC couple battered and bruised after tornado rips roof off their home

ROCKY MOUNT, NC (WRAL) — A North Carolina couple is battered and bruised after a tornado ripped the roof off their home.

They’re safe, but their home was destroyed and they don’t have insurance.

The tornado blew through Dortches Wednesday, slamming into the Puckett Mobile Home Park where Michael Poythress and Deborah Moore called home.

“I looked over to the west and it was already in the field right next to the house,” Poythress said.

quickly, he, Deborah and their dog Sabot ran to the bathroom.

“She got into the bathroom next to the tub. I started climbing into it. I had my shoulder against the door. I’m holding on to the dog with my left arm and I’m holding under her shirt tail with the other.”

They said about 15 seconds went by.

“I didn’t know what to think. I was just praying. The Lord let me live,” Moore said.

The couple says while in the bathroom, the roof blew off and they tumbled and rolled around in the rubble.

“She fell out of the tub and if I hadn’t held on to her, she would have been gone. She would have been in the tub,” Poythress said.

When the storm passed the couple and their dog were buried inside this heaping pile of their whole livelihood.

“We were both, head to toe, covered in insulation on a humid afternoon,” Poythress said.

Miraculously though, help wasn’t far.

“And luckily, an EMS was just happened to be passing by,” he said.

They got Deborah — who is already under hospice care — quickly onto a stretcher, the tornado leaving her with bumps, bruises and abrasions all over her body.

“I got a mean lump on my head. I got, they said they got it covered up. My skin is real thin. It just peeled the skin off my leg and you can almost see the bone,” Moore said.

But at the end of the day, the couple still had each other.

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