Wis. man, stepson were caught in path of Ky. tornadoes
Boy needed stitches; man has back fractures
Somewhere around midnight Saturday, Maranda Warbelton got a call from her fiancé, Jordan LeMarche. It was an accidental call, and all she could hear was the wind and him screaming for her son, Bentley.
Shortly after, LeMarche called her again to tell her what had just happened: A tornado tore through the small town in southwestern Kentucky where the two were staying. It rolled their trailer multiple times and threw them out into the field.
Warbelton was sick to her stomach. She said it was the worst feeling a mom could ever have.
“My boys are my life,” she said of LeMarche and Bentley.
LeMarche, who lives in Hortonville, transports horses across the country and was in Kentucky with his stepson to drop off a few. This was the first time he’d been to this farm in Kentucky. He had decided to go because he wanted a trip that wasn’t too far and could give him a little extra money for family Christmas presents.
The people whose farm they were at offered to let them stay in the house, but LeMarche felt confident that his 30,000-pound truck and trailer combination would be able to withstand high winds. He didn’t know tornadoes were in the forecast for that night.
The storm left LeMarche with a compression fractures in his back and gave Bentley a 3-inch cut across the forehead. It destroyed his trailer, filled with saddles, bridles, a generator and other equipment LeMarche needs to do his job. A GoFundMe page has been set up to help replace the lost equipment and pay medical bills.
At least 74 people were killed in Kentucky during the storms, including 12 children, according to the state’s governor, who said Tuesday it would probably go down as “one of the most devastating tornado events in U.S. history.”
‘All the sudden, we were outside’
Bentley, 9, had gone with LeMarche on previous work trips, but they were normally close by and just for a day or two. He wanted to go somewhere a little farther and outside of Wisconsin. Since Bentley has been doing well in school, his parents agreed he could go on the Kentucky trip.
By the time the storm was approaching, Bentley was asleep. The tornado warning from their cellphones woke him up. From there, everything happened quickly. LeMarche stepped outside to take a look at the sky and saw the rain coming and felt the wind pick up.
He came back inside and they got onto the bed and wrapped blankets around themselves. The trailer started bouncing before it rolled about three or four times. The two were thrown from the trailer as it rolled.
“We were inside and dry and then all the sudden, we were outside,” LeMarche said.
LeMarche tried to find Bentley amid all the debris, and didn’t see him just 2 feet away until a strike of lightning lit up the area where Bentley was lying.
He picked up Bentley, wrapped his shirt around him and crawled to a fence post to get their bearings. When he felt it was safe enough, LeMarche ran with Bentley in his arms to the house nearby.
It wasn’t until he got to the house that the adrenaline subsided enough for him to feel the pain in his foot and back. An ambulance was called and both of them were taken to a hospital for a slew of CT scans, X-rays and other evaluations.
Bentley needed 14 stitches for a cut on his forehead. LeMarche has multiple compression fractures to his back and an injury to his foot — too swollen to determine exactly what’s wrong, he said.
LeMarche was finally able to comprehend what had happened and process everything when they got to the hospital.
“Once I was in the hospital and I heard Bentley was getting stitched up and I was going off to get a CT scan, I started kinda getting the sense of reality that we’re somewhere safe,” he said. “The storm has died down. Everything is going to be OK. We’re both alive.”
Warbelton drove down to meet them as soon as she got the phone call explaining what happened, and the couple was still in Kentucky as of Tuesday morning. They have some loose ends to tie up with insurance, and a friend of a friend is letting them stay in their cabin while they sort out everything.
Bentley quickly returned to acting like a 9-year-old, LeMarche said. He was asking to play and told the man whose cabin they are staying in that he fought off a tornado with his hands.
“He is so inspirational,” Warbelton said of her son. “That kid is so resilient and dedicated and determined. He always amazes me.”
When she arrived in Kentucky, she met up with them at the cabin and found her son cuddled in a blanket with a cup of hot chocolate. The man who owns the cabin even took Bentley to an army base. He got to meet some servicemen who gave him a commemorative coin and the nickname of Tumbleweed.
Bentley’s dad picked him up and took him back to Wisconsin so he could get back to school and his routine.
The tornado swept through in a matter of seconds, but picking up the pieces is going to take longer. LeMarche said he won’t be able to work for weeks or months because of his back injuries. For now, they will need to rely on Warbelton’s income as a business operations manager in Appleton.
But they are thankful for the people — who were no more than strangers really — who opened up their cabin for them and everyone in the horse community who has helped them.
LeMarche and Warbelton have a wedding on the horizon, but she said that will probably need to wait until everything is settled and they can recover their essential items.
“It’s going to be something that doesn’t happen overnight,” she said.
People who wish to donate to the GoFundMe can search “Help Jordan & Maranda after the tornado in KY” on www.gofundme.com.