‘She saved our lives’: How a panicked driver spared a family from deadly Florida tornado spawned by Milton

(CNN) — As airborne debris was being sucked into a tornado forming before Michelle Westfield’s eyes, it became clear there would be no escape if she drove her car forward on a road in St. Lucie County, Florida, last Wednesday. It would be a death sentence.

She slammed on the brakes, put her car in reverse and bolted backward as far as she could go – the entire time screaming and pounding on the horn on Winter Garden Parkway, a residential road in Lakewood Park.

At that moment, a couple outside taking videos of water pooling on the road heard Westfield’s screams.

“She is screaming, ‘Get inside!’ and we are tripping over each other trying to get in the house,” Brandi Clarke told CNN.

After hearing Westfield’s warning, Clarke ran inside and grabbed their family to shelter in a hallway of the house. As soon as her husband shut the door, their entire house shook with the force of the tornado, she said.

“Everything felt like slow motion,” she said.

The dramatic story comes about a week after Hurricane Milton made landfall on the west coast of Florida and brought a flurry of tornadoes to the state’s east coast. The tornado in the Spanish Lakes community of St. Lucie County killed at least six people.

Westfield had been driving to her home in the Spanish Lakes community when she encountered a tornado that would end up ripping through homes on the road, where she had to reverse her car.

The carport and shed roof of her house was damaged, but the rest of her house were left intact. She said she’s just grateful to be alive.

After the incident, Clarke was so touched by Westfield’s warning that she posted about it on her Facebook in an attempt to find the “hero” who gave them the warning.

“She definitely saved our lives,” Clarke told CNN, adding that other neighbors heard her as well and got in their homes. “She deserves a hero award.”

“No matter how much she won’t accept it, you really did,” she told CNN affiliate WPEC, which was there when Clarke and Westfield met for the first time.

“I keep telling people I did not do anything heroic. I panicked, but my panic alerted people to go inside, and that’s a blessing,” Westfield told CNN.

A fateful encounter

Before the traumatic experience, the 55-year-old Westfield had been sheltering at work for almost three hours with her daughter and grandchildren as her phone was exploding with tornado warnings every few minutes, she said.

When she slammed on the brakes, a truck driver behind her started honking the horn, wanting to get past her.

“I started beeping my horn, like, ‘don’t go, don’t go!’” Westfield said. “He went around me, I put the car in reverse, and I just flew backwards as fast as I could, screaming, and just kept going until I saw it (the tornado) was kind of going off to the left.”

When it seemed safe, Westfield drove her daughter and grandchildren to their home, which is down the street from where she would later encounter the tornado forming on Winter Garden Parkway. She then started her trip home to Spanish Lakes, about three miles away, but only made it about a mile until she saw debris flying in the air.

Westfield floored the car backward until she reached the end of the road, desperately trying to get home to her husband, with whom she stayed on the phone during the chaotic car ride. She quickly realized she couldn’t take the turn she needed to get home.

“I looked and the gas pumps and the roof were gone at the gas station. I looked left, and two 18-wheelers had blown out of the Dollar General parking lot,” Westfield said. Still on the line with her husband, she yelled at him to take cover and get down on the floor as he heard the tornado heading his way.

“He heard me going through it, and I told him I’m safe, I got through it, and then it came straight into our community,” she said.

Westfield was still in a panic, desperately worried about her family, when she decided to take shelter at a nearby pizzeria called Nino’s, she said. The owner and his son then offered to rescue her husband from their home and went to check on her daughter and grandchildren, she continued.

In her Facebook post, attempting to find Westfield, Clarke said, “I swear I heard you scream get inside.”

“Within seconds of running into our home and grabbing our children off the couch, our house started shaking, my ears started popping, the dogs started howling and whining,” Clarke wrote. “For 15 seconds, my world froze as I heard the loudest rumbling noise go across the house.”

Before last week, Westfield didn’t know Clarke and her husband. But now, they all feel like they’ve gotten new family members.

After seeing Clarke’s Facebook post, the two met in person – and their bond was already palpable. Westfield and Clarke intend on staying friends, already making plans to barbecue in the driveway where the fateful encounter occurred.

“I’m a woman who panicked and fight or flight kicked in,” Westfield said. “I could have been home at that time … So obviously, I was supposed to drive by their house at that time and alert them to get inside to their kids.”

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