Restaurant Owner Tears Up in Fox Interview One Year After She Survived Tornado by Taking Refuge in Cooler

A Mississippi restaurant owner teared up in an interview with Fox Weather on Sunday, just one year after she and several others survived a tornado by taking shelter inside the restaurant’s cooler.

Fox Weather correspondent Katie Byrne interviewed Chuck’s Dairy Bar owner Tracy Harden one year after the disaster in Rolling Fork and witnessed the ongoing reconstruction of the restaurant – one of many buildings destroyed by the tornado which took 17 lives and injured 165 others.

“All nine of us that were in that cooler, we’re here, we’re healthy, we’re alive, we’re building our lives back,” Harden told Byrne. “A year ago that night, I didn’t know what was gonna happen.”

Tearing up, she recalled:

That night, you know, we had that one minute notice and we got in the cooler, we had customers get into the bathrooms, a couple get under the table, and within a minute the whole building was gone. So we were left with two bathrooms standing and a cooler, and everybody was alive.

As Harden showed Byrne the ongoing construction of the new restaurant building, she cried and said, “I’ll never have back what I had, but I’m so grateful for all the new and all the love we’re gonna get to spread in this big place. So just standing in here it just feels awesome.”

Harden also showed Fox Weather her restaurant’s new cooler, which replaced the cooler that saved nine lives during the 2023 tornado disaster.

“We called the cooler our life saver because that night, you know, we rushed into this little small space and we all nine walked out healthy, pretty much unscathed,” said Harden. “We were tight fit in here that night with all of the shelving and everything, but nine of us stood just in this little opening, surrounded by food and shelving, and we stood there and we cried, and in the end we just prayed and we thanked God for getting us through it.”

Watch above via Fox Weather.