A North Texas couple survives a powerful tornado that ripped through Oklahoma on their drive from Minnesota to Colleyville, Texas. NBC 5’s Maria Guerrero has the story.
The powerful tornado that ripped through Interstate 35 in Marietta, Oklahoma, left a North Texas husband badly injured.
Jeff Frederickson and his wife were on their way back home to Colleyville after driving up to Minnesota to pick up his family’s prized 1971 Thunderbird.
They knew storms were popping up across Oklahoma on Saturday and felt it was safer to keep driving.
A weather app showed storms on either side of them.
When they got to Marietta, the storm intensified, and traffic came to a standstill.
“Debris is flying hitting my truck,” he recalled. “I don’t know how bad it’s going to be. I said: 'You go to your ditch; I’ll go to mine,' and as I was saying that the 18-wheeler starts hopping across the pavement.”
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Frederickson blames himself for not realizing his wife had gotten stuck on something and was unable to run to the ditch.
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By that time, the tornado was over Interstate 35.
“I’m literally running behind the semi to get to the ditch as it’s going up,” he said.
By the time Frederickson landed in the ditch he had suffered severe injuries including 13 broken ribs [six ribs near his heart and lung were shattered but did not puncture any vital organs].
Frederickson also sustained a large gash in the back of his head which would later require ten staples to shut.
“I wasn’t able to yell for my wife so the first thing I did was I prayed to God. I said, 'God, I need your help to get through this situation. Get me and my wife both through this situation,'” he said. “I looked down and my thumb was split in half. I could see my bone and I said, 'Dear Lord Jesus don’t let me lose my thumb.'”
He was in and out of consciousness but remembers somehow walking from ambulance to ambulance. Frederickson was eventually airlifted to Medical City Denton where he is recovering.
Amazingly, his wife walked away with minor injuries.
“The only thing I’ve gotten out of this is that chokes me up is I probably shouldn't be here right now,” said an emotional Frederickson. “Several doctors said you’re lucky you’re alive and I say it’s not luck, it’s God.”
When it comes to being in the tornado’s so-called "death zone," Frederickson says, “the movies pretty much nailed it. What you see like when you look at ‘Twister’ and you see the cyclone and things spinning up… Seeing a car literally get sucked up, that’s probably the most amazing thing, not amazing the craziest thing I’ve seen in my life.”
Equally incredible is Frederickson almost immediately remembered a dream two weeks prior to the tornado where he was in a ditch with a tornado passing by.
“In my mind, I’m wondering if God was trying to reach out to me,” he now says.
Grateful to be alive, Frederickson is determined not to waste it.
“If there’s something God wants me here on this earth for, I got to figure that out,” he said.
Frederickson’s recovery continues to amaze doctors in Denton.
“When the doctor was telling me this morning, my first thing to him was: 'Do you believe in God,'” he asked. “And he said, 'I’m starting to.'”
