Tornado buried woman under nail salon in Suffolk

SUFFOLK - Brenda Williams was in a nail salon having her nails done at a Suffolk strip mall, which is a mass of twisted metal after yesterday’s storm.

She said the lights went out and everybody in the salon was looking around, then they looked outside and saw things flying around. They all ran into back of salon, and the whole building fell in on them.

Williams was buried in the debris.

She said she doesn’t remember anything until she felt someone stepping on her head and she said, “Hey, I’m under here.“ Someone reached down and pulled her out. She was taken by ambulance to Sentara Obici Hospital for stitches to the wounds on her face.

This morning, she and her family were pulling personal items out of her car, which is upside down in parking lot in front of the nail salon.

“It’s a good thing that building wasn’t made of much, because we would have been done,“ she said.

Nearby, a truck knocked a hole about one story high and 60 feet wide into a brick medical office building, and the truck is still embedded in the side of it. A broken water main is pouring water onto the truck.
Wanda White, who lives in a subdivision near the strip mall, visited the area this morning and pointed to a demolished restaurant.

“I ate pizza there just the other night,“ she said.