The Bassinet Went Up With the Roof. Ten Minutes Later He Was in a Tree.

On December 9, 2023, the siren in Clarksville, Tennessee, came late for Sydney Moore.

An EF3 tornado was already on the mobile home. The roof peeled off. Four-month-old Lord was asleep in a bassinet near the front. Moore’s partner, Aramis Youngblood, reached for the crib as the funnel dropped. Wind took both man and bassinet. Moore threw herself over one-year-old Princeton as the back walls came down.

When the roar passed, the trailer was wreckage in the rain. Youngblood’s shoulder was wrecked. They shouted for the baby. They searched about ten minutes.

Lord was lying in the fork of a fallen tree, perhaps thirty feet from where the home had stood. Moore said it looked as if someone had set him in a cradle of branches. He had a gash on his face and blood near an ear. He was crying. The family left the site with cuts and bruises. The house and the car were gone.

Photographs of the infant in his parents’ arms after hospital glue closed the cut traveled quickly. The National Weather Service rated the long-track storm a killer EF3; nearby segments of the outbreak reached winds near 125 mph. That is enough to throw a crib. It is not a law that says what happens after.

Moore’s sentence was the one that stuck: she had been sure he was dead. He was not.

Sources

CNN, “4-month-old found alive after getting swept up by Tennessee tornado,” December 16, 2023
BBC News, “Baby found alive in tree after Tennessee tornado,” December 15, 2023
WSMV / local Clarksville interviews with Sydney Moore and family, December 2023