Chelsea Thrash: Girl of Courage, Hope and Triumph

April 27, 2011, is a day that Tuscaloosa will never forget. For Chelsea Thrash, it's a the day she almost lost her life.

Chelsea, a junior majoring on biology, said that she had heard about the threats of tornadoes in the South, but she didn't think the warnings were relative to the Tuscaloosa area. "I didn't really think much of it in terms of Tuscaloosa because if you are from Alabama, you always hear that tornadoes don't go through cities – they go through the outskirts of the county," Chelsea said. She had planned to go to campus that afternoon with her boyfriend, Sloan. At the last minute, she decided to stay at his apartment to study for her upcoming chemistry final.

Alone at her boyfriend's apartment, Chelsea realized the sky was getting darker and knew something was wrong. She said, "I turned the TV on and was watching James Spann and he was just like 'If you are in Tuscaloosa, get to your safe place now'. I went to the most interior part of the apartment, which was the bathroom." Not five minutes later, the tornado hit the complex. Chelsea said it sounded like "a jet engine in your room… really loud and overwhelming." She continued, saying, "The atmospheric pressure was so intense that I couldn't move. I never had that feeling before, so I knew things were bad. And then I saw the door fly off its hinges like it was nothing. It was then that I blacked out."

About twenty to thirty minutes later, Chelsea woke up in the middle of the courtyard, staring up at the sky. She said, "I thought 'Did that really just happen?' I turned my head to the right and where there should be a two-level apartment was just rubble." She found her phone, which was just an arms-length away, and called her mother. Chelsea said, "For some miraculous reason, the call went through. What my Mom thought was going to be a call to check in with her turned out to be 'Mom, I'm alive but I can't feel my legs and the apartment is gone.'"