“All I can think was, I can’t believe this is happening,” Malaysia Smoke tells Inside Edition.
Breathtaking footage shows a car with a pregnant driver getting sent flying by a tornado created by winds from Hurricane Idalia.
The heart-stopping footage showed a car being picked off a highway and sent spinning in the air while the driver was driving home in rush-hour traffic in South Carolina.
The young woman behind the wheel, Malaysia Smoke, 21, survived the whirlwind event after the car landed on its side.
“All I can think was, I can’t believe this is happening,” Smoke told Inside Edition. “It kind of felt like a rollercoaster, like I saw the ground from a different angle in my car, which was so crazy.”
Smoke, who is five-months pregnant, tells Inside Edition she did not get hurt and her baby checked out okay at the hospital.
Smoke’s car wasn’t the only thing to fall victim to the damage Hurricane Idalia left in its trail.
Inside Edition traveled to Cedar Key, Florida, one of the areas hit hardest by the hurricane, and found homes and businesses torn apart and others completely wiped out by the water and winds.
It is believed that it will take years to clean up and rebuild after the devastation caused by Hurricane Idalia.
The town of Crystal River was inundated by the storm surge. Streets were swamped by two feet of water.
One house that could not be beaten by the tropical storm is that of Gene and Tammy Teener, a couple that owns a hurricane-proof house created by Deltech.
The home, built in 2019, has a circular shape to help deflect the strong winds, practically impenetrable high-impact windows, and is anchored to the earth by columns that go 20 feet down into the ground.
Inside Edition went to see if the house stood true to its name and sure enough, it was still standing.
The Teeners were happy to hear their home survived the hard conditions after they evacuated to Orlando.
“It's great, we didn't have to worry about anything, no preparations,” the Teeners tells Inside Edition. “This really was a smart idea and something you would recommend to everyone living this close to the water.”
