Home crushed, but not hope: Benefit accounts set up for tornado victims

Tyler and Alexis Saxton spent Friday walking around the property on which their home sat, recovering belongings before they are irreversibly damaged by weather.

Although an overwhelming cleanup task lies before them, the couple is grateful to be alive after the tornado that ripped through the Placid Lake area June 18 dropped a giant tree on their mobile home, crushing the roof and pinning them and their 2-year-old son inside.

"I think about it now, and it's almost surreal," Alexis, 31, said. "It just happened so fast, and it's not something you ever imagine happening to you."

Cuts, bruises and a couple broken ribs are reminders to the Saxtons of the moment that could have resulted in a much more serious outcome. Although they've lost almost everything they own, the ferocious winds generated by the EF2 tornado left their family intact.

"It's a 'one day at a time'-type situation," Alexis said. "Otherwise it gets overwhelming."

On the evening of the severe thunderstorm that produced winds topping 120 mph and a half-mile-wide tornado that touched down for an estimated 3.5 miles, the Saxtons were unaware just how imminent the danger was.

Alexis returned home with the couple's sleeping son, Curtis, and laid him on the couch, about 45 minutes before the storm charged through. The power was out at their home when she arrived, so they did not have television or radio alerting them to the tornado warning in Cass for and Crow Wing counties. She said they did not hear a tornado siren, either.

"Just shortly before everything happened, our phones alerted," Alexis said. "But when we looked it up, it said there was a tornado warning for the Staples area. It was no more than we looked at that and all of a sudden ... there was a big old gust of wind, and the pine trees in front of the house started bending."

Tyler looked at Alexis and told her to grab Curtis-they needed to be safe somewhere, he said. Just seconds later, the ceiling collapsed, pinning each of them under its weight. Alexis could no longer see Tyler, a mass of twisted metal and insulation between them.

"Luckily, I had my phone in my right hand when I had jumped up to go grab my son," Alexis said. "I dialed 911, and all I did was start screaming my address into my phone."

With Curtis crying loudly right next to her head, Alexis said the dispatcher couldn't hear her at first. They were able to track the location of their phone, however, and emergency personnel were sent to help.

"My husband was freaking out, because he couldn't breathe," Alexis said. "The roof of our house was completely on top of my husband."

Alexis remembered the length of her call, waiting for help to arrive at their rural home set back from Nokay Lake Road, down to the second.

"It was 17 minutes and 56 seconds," she said. "I was looking at my phone because I was on speaker phone. ... It just felt like it was hours going by."

Soon, she heard sirens and then heard someone yelling outside the house. She could see him through a crack, but he couldn't see her.

"I was able to push a piece of debris off the top of the house and I got my hand out," Alexis said, which drew the attention of rescuers from the Deerwood Fire Department and Crow Wing County Sheriff's Office.

They peeled a wall off the side of the home and told Alexis they would need a chainsaw. It was then she learned it was more than just a collapsed roof-one of the pines in front of their home was crushing its full weight into them.

Once a large portion of the tree was removed, firefighters pulled the couch out from the home, first freeing Curtis, then Alexis and finally Tyler. Curtis and Tyler were taken to Cuyuna Regional Medical Center in Crosby, although Alexis, who had a large cut on her head, was transported to Essentia Health-St. Joseph's Medical Center in Brainerd to receive a CT scan. Because of power loss in Crosby, Alexis said they were unable to perform the scan.

"I ended up getting staples on my head and my knee is just really mangled up," Alexis said.

Once all were released from the hospital, they returned to the home to survey the damage. That's when they began to understand the tornado's true power. A second mobile home on the property, used for storage purposes, was completely gone from where it once stood.

"It was thrown like 100 feet from where it was originally sitting," Alexis said. "It just dumped everything out and flipped it over. The roof to it is rolled up and it's sitting in our front yard."

A freezer that was sitting outside the second mobile home remained in place, however.

"The most random things were in the same place," Alexis said. "My husband left a gas jug from mowing sitting out in a completely open area. It didn't move. How that didn't move, we have no idea."

Days after the storm, a woman who'd seen the Saxtons on TV contacted Alexis through Facebook. She'd found something in the ditch-6 miles away-she thought might belong to them.

"She said, 'I found this card in my ditch, and it has your guys' name on it,'" Alexis said. "It was a birthday card I got from my little sister."

Without a home to live in, the Saxton family is currently living in a hotel paid for by their insurance company. That support will get them through the end of July, although the family is not sure whether they'll be in a position to find a new place to live by then. Alexis said it's not as simple as purchasing a new home.

"In this case, we have to get a home, we have to get everything for a home, plus, before we can even do that, in a situation like this, you have to pay to clean up everything," she said. "Before you can even begin to move forward with any of that, there's just so much cost that goes into it. You don't ever think about that kind of thing. You pull into our driveway and it's like, 'Where do you even start with all of this?'"

Despite owning the home, the family does not have a homeowner's insurance policy because they do not own the land, Alexis said. They have a renter's insurance policy, which covers up to $10,000 in lost property.

To support the Saxtons in their loss, other family members have stepped up to create donation funds.

"They didn't have much before, and now they have nothing," said Gloria Sticha, Tyler's mom.

How to help

• Donate via www.gofundme.com/2acef5ac , the GoFundMe page called, "Help Out the Saxtons."

• Send a check for the "Tyler and Alexis Saxton Benefit Account" to Deerwood Bank, 21236 Archibald Road, Deerwood, MN, 56444.

CHELSEY PERKINS may be reached at 218-855-5874 or chelsey.perkins@brainerddispatch.com . Follow on Twitter at www.twitter.com/DispatchChelsey .