Miracle: Baby swept up by US tornado found alive on fallen tree

For 10 anxious minutes, Sydney Moore feared the worst after a tornado destroyed her family’s mobile home in Clarksville, Tennessee on the evening of Dec 9.

In the aftermath, the younger of her two sons, four-month-old Lord, was missing.

Moore’s boyfriend Aramis Youngblood, 39, had rushed to try and protect Lord who was fast asleep in his cot, but both ended up getting dragged out of the home in a swirl of wind and debris after the twister sheared its roof off, reported CNN.

"He [Youngblood] was just holding on to the bassinet the whole time, and they went into circles," Moore, 22, recalled.

Youngblood, with a dislocated shoulder, later spent 10 minutes rummaging through debris before finding a crying Lord lodged in a fallen tree, about 9m from where their home once stood.

"It was like a scene in a movie," Moore said. "I remember seeing Aramis walking up in the pouring rain, clothes ripped, with Lord in his arms."

She added that the tornado arrived without warning, and that she and Youngblood acted to protect their kids after hearing a sound that she described on news programme Good Morning America as an airplane flying directly over them.

When she realised what was happening, she immediately jumped over her one-year-old son, Princeton, to shield him with her body.

"Something in me just told me to run and jump on top of my son," Moore told Nashville’s WSMV News. "The moment I jumped on him, the walls collapsed."

While trying to find paramedics, the family were able to reach first responders who assisted them in flagging an ambulance which was passing through the area.

Lord was examined by a medic who assessed him to be a "perfectly healthy baby", said Moore, although he had a laceration on his face.

Nearly none of the family’s personal belongings were salvageable in the wake of the tornado. Moore’s sister has set up a crowdfunding page to help her recover from the losses, and find a new home.

The storms in Tennessee, where at least two tornadoes touched down on Dec 9, left a large path of destruction and displaced thousands, reported CNN.

Hundreds of homes were destroyed and at least six people were killed, including a mother and her toddler.

ALSO READ: Tennessee looks to recovery after string of deadly tornadoes

This article was first published in The Straits Times. Permission required for reproduction.