'Everyone was Yelling and Screaming and Crying and Praying'

As the dark sky rotated and the fierce wind got even worse, five CWA members and a family of six they helped save ran to the back of the Joplin, Mo., AT&T Mobility store and squeezed inside the pitch-dark bathroom.

Minutes earlier, at 5:30 p.m. on a Sunday, the five employees had closed for the day. The city's tornado sirens were screeching, but they'd heard that many times before. The typical storm hit miles away, at worst blowing a roof off a building or two. The workers' main concern was that the power had gone off and they couldn't set the store's alarm system.

But in a matter of moments, they knew it was different this time. Outside their stand-alone building, a large pickup pulled into the parking lot with two adults and four children trying to find a safe place to wait for the funnel cloud to pass. The employees, members of Local 6312, let them in and told them to run to the back.

Over the howl of the wind the workers yelled at each other to get inside the bathroom. "Just in the nick of time," Logan Pickett remembers, they pulled the door closed behind them.

"The second that the door closed, all I remember is that you could just feel it, feel everything trembling, the walls were shaking, tiles were getting lifted up and down," says Pickett, 22.

His friend and coworker Sean Meador had his back against the door. "As soon as we got in the bathroom, the store windows busted out and the fire escape door flew open and I think the last thing any of us remember is a really, really big boom. The bathroom door came off, slammed me in the back and sent me flying into a brick wall."

Meador, 27, says he's pretty sure everyone blacked out. "The pressure was so intense," he said. "It was like the sound of a train and you feel like your eyeballs are going to pop out. You can't breathe.”

The next thing he knew, he was lying in rubble next to two members of the family, with a beam across his chest and theirs. An industrial-size air conditioning unit from the roof was atop his feet. "I wiggled and tried to scoot my feet out of my shoes," he says. "There was debris everywhere. I started hollering to people. Dave, Sharyl, Kelly and Logan were probably 20 to 30 feet from where I was. We got moved all over the building."

Like Meador and Pickett, Local 6312 members Dave Campbell and Kelly Newlan-Mishler were badly bruised and battered, but survived. Sharyl Nelsen did not. As they called out for each other and the family they soon realized that Sharyl was the only one not answering.

Meador and Newlan-Mishler were the first two able to dig themselves out, and they headed for help, both bleeding from cuts to their heads, among other injuries. "Kelly and I were both in shock," Meador says. "It was hailing out. I looked every which way. Everything was gone. Cars were upside down in the street.

Pickett had been holding onto a pipe under the bathroom sink, as well as having his arms around "Big Dave" and Sharyl. "When the tornado took the building, it moved all the piping and I went flying with the pipe," he says. "I could feel my body lift off the ground and then the pipe pulled me."

He doesn't know what he was thinking or feeling at that moment, but remembers that before, as they ran for the bathroom, he was scared. He had called his mother and told her he loved her. "I knew something wasn't right, but I didn't know how bad it was," he says.

When he first woke up in the rubble, "I could hear stuff still hitting, the winds blowing and swirling," he says. "You could feel it physically. It wasn't painful, but you could feel the vibrations. I must have went black again because I remember waking up and everyone was yelling and screaming and crying and praying."

For more than an hour, maybe two, he and everyone but Sean and Kelly remained trapped. When they were rescued, there was no hospital for them to go to. The tornado had demolished it, too.

They saw doctors in the following days, but are still healing and very sore. Pickett says he's had a constant headache and Meador says he's in pain when he moves, can't stand for long, can't even lie on his back. In addition to their medical care, Local 6312 President Jim Billedo is working with CWA and AT&T to guarantee that his members get whatever counseling they need.

Meador says he's been emotional and edgy as he tries to process his near-death experience and the death of a coworker and friend. "Every time I close my eyes I still replay it," he says.