She had an urge to flee her home in a tornado. It may have saved her life.

She left her Iowa basement to flee a tornado, probably saving her life - The Washington Post

When she saw darkened skies and a tornado barreling toward her home Friday afternoon, Glenda Sieren’s first instinct was the one that had been drilled into her since childhood by her parents and news reports: She went into her basement and hunkered down.

“I just didn’t feel like I was supposed to be there,” Sieren said. “I ran back upstairs to take another look, and I thought, ‘Do I have time to get out?’”

She did — barely. And she credits the decision to get in her car and flee her Hedrick, Iowa, farm — something she knows goes against conventional wisdom in a tornado — with saving her life.

Sieren, 67, waited out the storm in a nearby town and returned around two hours later, only to find her house torn from its foundation and her basement flooded with debris. As she joins countless families in Indiana, Tennessee and Iowa recovering from the trail of devastation left by strong tornadoes in the Mississippi Valley, Sieren said she feels grateful to be alive.

“I pray for God’s guidance and direction every day,” said Sieren, whose story was first reported by WHO13. “And I feel like He guided me that day.”

At least 16 tornadoes were reported in the storm system that moved through Iowa on Friday, according to the Des Moines Register, as deadly weather battered states across the South, Midwest and Mid-Atlantic over the weekend and killed at least 24 people. At least eight people were injured in Iowa, the Register reported, and the tornado that hit Sieren’s county of Keokuk — along with nearby Washington and Johnson counties — reached a wind speed of 170 mph.

Sieren had just finished tending to her cattle around 3:45 p.m. Friday when a tornado alarm went off on her phone, she said. She turned on the TV to see whether a map could show her how close it was. Then she pulled back her curtains and saw it looming in her picture window. It was about five miles away, she guessed.

She waited a beat to gauge its direction. It was close, so she heeded the common advice she knew to follow and went to her basement. But something felt wrong, she said.

“As soon as I was standing down there, I just had this uneasy feeling,” Sieren said. “When I look back on it, I feel like God was telling me, ‘Don’t stay here.’”

She raced back upstairs and checked again on the tornado, which had drawn closer but wasn’t bearing down on her house just yet.

“I could tell it was headed straight for me,” Sieren said. “It was kind of scary.”

She guessed it was still about a mile or two away. She also saw that the skies were clear to the east. So Sieren made the call. She raced outside to her car, a black Chevrolet Blazer, and sped away from the tornado as fast as she could.

Sieren drove southeast for 25 miles, watching the storm slowly recede in her rearview mirror, until she reached the city of Fairfield. It was only then that her thoughts began to settle. Leaving her home went against Sieren’s instincts in more ways than one — the farm was a family hub, and her parents built the house in the 1950s. But she said she also felt an odd sense of calm and believed she’d made the right decision.

“I was intense and anxious,” Sieren said. “But I had a peace about me, too.”

She was proved right when she returned to her home. The tornado passed straight through her farm, leveling fences and outhouses and lifting her white, three-bedroom ranch house up off its foundation. The winds moved the house 50 feet, Sieren said, and she thinks it could have been swept farther if it hadn’t been stopped in its path by a tree. She also lost several cows.

The basement was left exposed, and the winds turned it into a pit of debris. Dumped near the corner where Sieren had been standing was the frame of a livestock trailer.

“A lot of people that have come and looked in the basement, they say, ‘You know, you made the wise decision,’” Sieren said. “‘I’m not so sure the basement was the safest place to be.’”

Now, Sieren begins the slow work of sorting through what’s left of her home. The wind blew out her windows, and corn stalks from last year’s harvest litter her floors, though she was able to recover some treasured family photos from the rubble.

“I still haven’t cried,” Sieren said. “I know I will someday. This is my family heritage. I grew up there, my parents lived there for 51 years, I think. So it’s going to be hard not knowing whether to rebuild.”

Sieren is staying with one of her sons while she recovers. She praised the response of the community: Volunteers and schoolchildren have come to help clear her fields and sort through debris. A community group organized a potluck Wednesday evening where families cooked for those who had been affected by the tornadoes.

“That’s Iowa strong,” she said. “That’s Iowa heart.”

Sieren is also quick to stress that she knows she didn’t follow conventional wisdom in fleeing her home — and that not everyone should follow her lead. The National Weather Service warns that being in a vehicle during a tornado is not safe and that people should shelter in a basement or interior room if at home and, if outside, get down in their car or exit it to seek shelter in a ditch.

Sieren would have returned to her basement if she didn’t see a clear path to flee from the tornado, she said.

“I might have been all right,” Sieren said. “You just don’t know. But I think I might have died from a heart attack.”