COVINGTON, Ga. — When the tornado tore through Covington on Friday, Alisha Jacques said she was sitting in the Chick-fil-A drive-thru on Salem and Brown Bridge Road, stuck between cars in line as the funnel cloud came straight for her.
“I don’t think it hasn’t hit me yet, I still feel all like it’s a nightmare,” she said of the experience.
Jacques said she drove her brother to the Chick-fil-A around 5:30 p.m. because they were closing early for New Year’s Eve. She added that they’d just placed their order, and that there were more than 40 other cars around her, trapping her in, when they saw a tornado coming straight for them.
“We were both screaming as the car was flipping, I was looking up at the windshield and it just keeps going and going,” Jacques said. “I didn't want to get out and leave my car, and run and leave my car there because I still would’ve been in the same situation.”
But by then, it was too late. “It just happened all of a sudden; the transformer blew out from Chick-fil-A. The whole car was picked up from the passenger side and it flipped my car like three of four times, so from the third lane to the front door is where my car landed,” said Jacques.
When her car landed, it crashed driver's side down, with her brother’s side up in the air.
“All I could think was to bring my brother closer to me and to scream for him and try to grab for him,” Jacques added.
Thankfully, both she and her brother were strapped in.
“The airbags deployed and the windshield is busted. The Chick-fil-A manager came and pulled him out and all they could think of was to pull me out, and everybody kept telling us to get away from the car because it was smoking,” said Jacques.
She said her car is totaled and, beside cuts and bruises, she and her brother will both be OK, but she will never forget the fear she felt when it happened.
“It’s something that I don’t ever want to do again or would wish on anybody, it’s literally terrifying,” Jacques said.
She explained two other vehicles in the parking lot looked like they were damaged but she said those cars were empty. She also said, today most of all, she feels thankful to the people around her at Chick-fil-A who helped get them out of the car and thankful that they were not badly hurt.