What if she had not hit the bottom step into her basement at that precise moment?
Houses and trees show damage after severe storms moved through Brimfield Wednesday.BRIMFIELD - Cindy Travi looked at the mountain of rubble that used to be her post-and-beam home on Hollow Road and thought: what if?
What if she had not hit the bottom step into her basement at that precise moment? What if she had not spotted a chunk of concrete foundation to cling to as the funnel cloud swept through? What if her husband had been sitting in his favorite chair on the third floor?
“As much as I’m sad about my house, I can’t believe I’m alive. I really shouldn’t be here,“ said Travi, who along with her husband, Vincent, surveyed what was once their home on Thursday afternoon.
Travi said she had just planted a tomato bush outside when her mother-in-law called to warn her about tornadoes reported in Western Massachusetts.
“She screamed at me to get in the basement, and as soon as my foot hit the last step, the phone flew out of my hand and the house exploded,“ said Travi, who took cover behind her furnace until that, too, careened into the air and left her exposed. “I crawled toward this piece of cement and hung on. When I looked up I just saw sky and trees.“
It took her 20 minutes to crawl out after the tornado retreated, and she sat bewildered and bruised in the middle of the street along with many of her neighbors.
A small blessing: the couple has homeowners insurance. Brett Minney, owner of a trailer home just down the street, was not so lucky.
“I’ve been out of work. Money was tight and I couldn’t afford the insurance. This was all I had. I planned to live here for the rest of my life,“ said Minney, who was battered from head to toe after being whipped around by the tornado in his double-wide trailer Wednesday evening.
Like Travi, Minney said he was taken by surprise at the fury of the storm. And like his neighbor, he thought he wouldn’t survive it.
“It was just this nasty roaring sound ... I grabbed my cat and a blanket and hid in a closet. Within seconds I was up in the air flipping around and looking at broken trees,“ he said.
He and some friends and family members picked through the ruins on Thursday, salvaging what they could: shoes, clothes and other items.
Minney bemoaned his bad luck, while his stepmother, Barbara Minney, urged him to change his outlook.
“You came out alive. You were blessed, totally blessed,“ she said.