LOXAHATCHEE, Fla. — As tornadoes touched down in Palm Beach County and the Treasure Coast, one woman had to seek shelter under a truck.
Heather Connerley said she was outside when saw the massive tornado in her backyard.
“It was just real dark out and I just heard this loud vortex,” she said.
She and her family were outside trying to go to their neighbor's trailer in Loxahatchee. Connerley’s husband and son made it inside but she ran out of time.
"I turned around. I saw the tornado right behind me, and I ran and ducked under his truck," she said.
She crawled as fast as she could under her neighbors truck, scraping her knees and hoping the tornado would quickly pass. She described what it was like to ride out the tornado.
"You could feel it wobbling back and forth, even the trailers," Connerley said. "You could see them just shaking. All the screens were blown out, everything."
She lay there for five minutes until the tornado passed.
“Was there a part of you nervous that you would get crushed?” WPTV's Kayla McDermott asked.
“Yes, that it would pick the truck up and land back on top of me,” she said. “It’s very traumatic, very traumatic.”
Connerley is not the only one who is traumatized.
Across the state, others are also trying to heal mentally from Hurricane Milton.
“People had really tough experiences and it really helps to get a hug or offer a listening ear,” Dariana Molina, of the American Red Cross, said.
The American Red Cross has been on the phone and on the ground meeting and helping people impacted.
“Regardless of the disaster, it’s very normal to feel stressed and worried, whether you're an adult or a child,” Molina said.
Connerley said mental health is important to her as well, and she is speaking with someone to talk about her experience underneath the pick-up truck during the tornado.
