By Steve Keenan, The Register-Herald
HICO, W.Va. — Kay Persinger relocated from Parkersburg just a few weeks back and is living with her daughter, Miranda Crist, and her family in Hico.
On Tuesday, Persinger thought her time with the family was about to come to an abrupt end as thunderstorms and high winds ripped a path through Fayette and other counties.
Persinger Wednesday recounted surviving the winds that inundated the Hico area and elsewhere in the county the previous day and left behind major damage.
She said she had gone out to the garage for a smoke and began to notice a shift in the weather while she was out there.
“I was in the garage because I don’t smoke in the house,” Persinger said by phone Wednesday afternoon. “I heard it start to rain … then the wind really started blowing.”
In short order, she saw a garage door get “ripped out” and go flying. For protection, she wedged herself between a refrigerator and freezer and another door.
The garage roof eventually blew off, and tools inside the garage scattered. “I just knew it (the roof) was going, but me and the door went last,” she recalled.
At the time, she had a sense of foreboding that the precarious situation wasn’t going to end well for her. “I knew I was going to die, but I didn’t,” Persinger said, adding that she still can’t explain exactly how she survived.
While the garage was demolished (and the freezer wound up in a neighbor’s yard), Persinger said she was thrown “not very far” and wound up suffering fractures in two toes, as well as a banged-up knee. “All I can think of is how grateful I am,” she said.
