Nebraska brothers sucked out of their home by a tornado survive to tell the tale
Roger and Royce were in the basement until their little dog ran upstairs.
Roger and Royce were in the basement until their little dog ran upstairs.
Roger and Royce were in the basement until their little dog ran upstairs.
Roger and Royce Slatten were inside their Nebraska home when a tornado rolled into their neighborhood outside Omaha on Friday night.
They ducked into the basement with their two dogs, until little Yorkiepoodle Nico scampered upstairs. The Slattens went to scoop up their best friend just as an EF3 tornado clawed away at the roof and the rest of the house.
"The whole house lifted like you," Royce Slatten said. "You could feel the vacuum and the whole house lift up."
Each of them was thrown into the sky. Royce remembers bits and pieces of being in the sky and being pelted on the back.
Debris tore up their torsos and bruised their limbs.
"(I'm) still pretty rough," Roger said, gingerly walking.
Roger recalled cartwheeling in the air until he landed in the backyard. His right arm was free to call 911 to his home, which was on top of him.
"You can't do anything about it, so you kind of just do what they tell you on all the survival shows and just go limp," Roger said, recalling Bear Grylls.
Royce, a military man himself, thought he lost his brother. Deployment had nothing on that feeling.
"Even thinking about it kind of chokes me up because I really thought he was dead," Royce said.
The brothers and their dogs are back together and staying with loved ones. It's a story dozens of volunteers can't believe.
"I can't even imagine, like I look at the houses and how some are still put together, and some are completely destroyed," volunteer Sarah Deselms said.
Even through the stitches in their backs, the Slattens say it could have all been much worse.
"I'm standing here without any support right now, and our whole house is gone," Royce said.
Neither suffered broken bones. They say their story, and the volunteers who keep coming back to clean the neighborhood, are a miracle.
