‘I literally thought I was going to die.’ Timberview coach survives tornado in March

Rebekah Morrison had quite the school year.

A science teacher and the head track coach at Mansfield Timberview, Morrison experienced a school shooting in October. She also coached the girls track and field team to a Class 5A state runner-up finish in May.

But Morrison may not be around after her near-death experience in March during the tornadoes that hit Jacksboro and Bowie. The one in Jacksboro was classified as an F-3 with winds reaching 150 mph. The one in Bowie was an F-1 with winds up to 80 mph.

Morrison was driving home after spending spring break in Amarillo and was hoping to beat out most of the inclement weather that was coming in.

The closer she got to Wichita Falls, she could see the clouds building up.

Then it started to rain.

“I had reached out to a few of my friends to check the weather for me since I was driving,” Morrison said. “The first report back was that there was a tornado warning for Jacksboro and it was moving to the northeast. We calculated that I had enough time to beat the storm.

“Well, we were wrong.”

The rain was coming down so hard that Morrison could barely see and was driving 40 mph.

She couldn’t see anything.

“It was one of those things where you pick your poison. If I pulled over, I knew that I couldn’t see so neither could people see me so I just kept driving,” Morrison said. “I started noticing the sky was changing colors and at this point I was worried about hail. I looked for an overpass to park under, but again the visibility was so low that I didn’t really feel safe there.”

As she reached Bowie, Morrison could see circulation and debris flying.

She pulled to the side along with the truck in front of her.

She was on the phone at the time when she was caught in a tornado. All she could do was scream.

“I didn’t know what to do. I buried my head down in my floorboard as best I could. All I could hear was debris hitting my car,” Morrison said. “It was so loud.

“I stayed on the phone the whole time screaming that I was going to die and they could hardly hear me because it was so loud. It felt like forever, but probably only lasted a couple of minutes.”

As the tornado passed, it had sucked all the air out of her car.

Morrison couldn’t breathe.

“I was shaking and couldn’t catch my breath,” Morrison said. “I decided I needed to drive on so I traveled on to Alvord where it was clear skies and no rain. There was so many road signs down and debris all over the road.”

When she finally had time to look over the damages to her car, every single crack on her passenger side was full of twigs and leaves. Then she went to a friend’s house in Decatur to wait out the rest of the storms before going back home to Mansfield.

“I was well past a 10 on being scared,” she said. “I don’t get too scared about things like that very often, but that had me totally freaked out. It’s crazy how many thoughts can go through your head in a short amount of time. I literally thought I was going to die. I was like this is it, my life is literally coming to end on the side of the road.”

Luckily, Morrison wasn’t hurt at all.

However, her car took a beating.

“I joked and said it literally looked like a speckled Easter egg,” Morrison said. “The crazy thing is, it had just got out of the shop maybe two weeks before. One of my track dads worked on it before. After glancing at it, he thought it would be at least $5,000 in damages. Once it got into the shop, it turned out to be just under $26,000.

“It’s been in the shop since May 11 and I still have a week or two before getting it back.”

Added Morrison, “I do believe God was there and had a hand in keeping me safe. Next time I will find somewhere to pull over. It was an experience that I certainly don’t want to do again. It really wasn’t until that night before I could look back and reflect about how blessed I was to not have been hurt.”