- It's true what they say -- everything just stops.
There's no rain. There's no wind.
There's no nothing, and it's just there and then it's gone.
Just sounds like just a train, just in your ear, just --
It's just overwhelming.
- It was so fast, but yet it felt like a lifetime.
It was awful. It was absolutely awful.
- I'm from Mayfield, and the history,
the little bit of history that was left is no more,
and that -- that's what sucks the most, honestly.
- This was my business. It was a healing center.
Um -- -It's just devastating.
- We don't even know what to say.
It's like, you just lose everything in a minute.
- Tornado came through here three years ago
and just kind of hopped and skipped
and did damage to a car dealership and stuff,
but nothing to this degree. This is unbelievable.
- Yeah, actually how we found out is,
because he's a physician,
the CEO called him and asked him --
-We had a mass casualty drill at the hospital.
We had people everywhere.
We were suturing people up. It was kind of crazy.
- So they asked him for help. - And we were like, "What?
What, it's that serious?"
And then that's how we kind of learned about the devastation.
- Yeah. - So that was last night,
and then early into, like, 4:00 AM
this morning, I was in the hospital.
Like I said, the CEO called about 10:00, 10:30,
and I thought he was just checking on me,
and then he said, "Hey, can you come up here?
One of the other general surgeons,
one of the orthopedic surgeons were up there.
There were people everywhere, lots of children.
People with lacerations, broken bones.
I mean, they just kept coming in.
We were using different parts of the hospital for triage,
and we were suturing people up normally
where we'd pre-op people before surgery.
The ER -- I mean, it was kind of crazy.
People live up and down this street
that are just completely without everything.
They have nothing.
Absolutely nothing. - Yeah.
- So we are blessed, in that regard.
- You just can't describe losing everything --
And again, I can't imagine if this was our home.
I mean, this is just business stuff,
so you know, it's not my home.
- Yeah, this house was built in about 1916, and we came in
and we had converted it and totally redid it.
This is Merritt Behavioral Associates.
We've been here for, gosh, at least 13 or 14 years.
It's a total loss, and it's something
that we're going to recover from and hopefully find another place
so that we can continue providing outpatient services
for the people of this community.
- For years, I've sat in this office
and I had this stained
glass window here behind my desk.
My patients would sit on the sofa here and I'd sit over here,
and this is where I did all of my work.
I just feel so fortunate that nobody was here
and it happened at night,
and that there wasn't a loss of life for any of our folks
or for our employees here at Merritt Behavioral Associates.
- At 9:30, I was watching from this window, come through.
It just hit immediately,
and we ran up in the bathroom to hide in the bathtub.
It was crazy.
I ain't never been so scared in my life.
Me and my brother, we both dived in the bathtub
and covered up with the door.
It was crazy.
I kept thinking the house was gonna fall down on me.
It was crazy.
I'm talking about, it was shaking the whole house.
I thought it was in the backyard.
My brother's screaming, "The house is gonna fall!"
I had dragged him in the bathtub with me.
I mean, just tore the roof straight off her.
I did not know.
There was telephone poles all over the front yard.
It was crazy.
There was sparks flying from the cables.
It was crazy.
- Yeah, it was like I was telling my husband,
this is stuff you only turn on the TV and you see,
and it's hard, but you don't truly get it
until you walk out your front door
and see it firsthand, and then it's like, "What?
No way. This did not just happen.
Not in my town."