An elderly married couple who held on to each other when a tornado struck their home lost an arm each.
Paul and Gail Cline were holding hands inside their home in London, Kentucky, when a twister tore through and forcefully separated them.
‘The doctors said that they lost opposite arms because they were holding each other,’ their niece, Brandy Bowman told WLEX.
Neighbors looking for survivors heard Gail’s screams.
‘She said, “I need help. I see an arm down the hallway,”‘ said Bowman, explaining that it was Gail’s arm.
Rescue workers pulled Gail and her husband from the rubble and they were rushed to London Hospital. Gail also sustained punctures on her lungs from her ribs and is on life support.
Paul’s health has improved, but he suffers from dementia and is having trouble understanding what happened.
The couple ‘lost everything’ when the EF-3 tornado with 170mph winds struck on May 16.
‘They both lost an arm and my aunt is still on life support,’ wrote Taylor Baker of her aunt and uncle in a GoFundMe page.
‘Their home and vehicles and everything they’ve worked for is gone. They are two of the best people you could ever find.’
The couple’s 12-year-old dog, Sadie, managed to escape as the twister hit and returned hours later to their bedroom. Sadie was taken to the hospital to help comfort Paul.
Baker added that Gail’s daughter is battling stage 4 cancer, so ‘they need all the help and prayers they can get’.
The GoFundMe page had raised more than $71,000 as of Friday evening.
London is about 150 miles southeast of Louisville.
It happened more than a year after a tornado ravaged a home in Clarksville, Tennessee, and sucked a four-month-old boy from his bassinet. The infant miraculously survived and was found alive on a tree.
