Tornado 911 Caller: 'Just Scared That My Mom Was Dead'

Feb. 7, 2007 — -- In the days after tornadoes hit central Florida last week, killing 20 people and destroying scores of homes, one woman's frantic 911 call resonated across the country.

Minutes after the tornado struck, 20-year-old Dottie Thomas called 911, fearing her mother had been blown away by the 150-mph winds.

"My mom is gone. My mom's bed is gone," Thomas said to an operator. "The tornado came and took the whole house she was in!"

Thanks to sturdy Sheetrock and no small amount of luck, Thomas' mother, Rudy, survived the storm by crouching down and holding onto a door.

"Lucky, I was awake and I heard the warning on TV and I told the kids. I said, 'This tornado looks like it's coming for us,'" Henry Thomas, Dottie's father and Rudy's husband, told "Good Morning America" anchor Robin Roberts.

"I said [to] be ready, and a few minutes later, it was like a long, extended rumble of thunder, which I guess is the freight train thing you always hear," he said.

The tornado wreaked the ultimate havoc quickly.

"I got them all together and said get in the hallway. In the meantime, my son called my wife on the phone and she got up at the same time and no sooner than we got in the hallway did it hit, breaking glass," he said. "Fifteen seconds later it was gone. I came out with a flashlight and it was nothing but a pile of rubble."

Rudy Thomas was headed for the bathroom when the tornado hit.

"Before I could even close the door, the tornado blew the roof off and was trying to pull the door out of my hands," she said. "I was holding on for dear life thinking if somebody's got to get hurt or die, let it be me, not my kids."

At that point, Dottie Thomas made the 911 call that has been heard on newscasts across the country. She said she was so worried about her mother, that the prospect of a tornado didn't even faze her."

"I was just scared that my mom was dead," she said. "The tornado didn't even scare me because the thinking that my mom was dead scared me so much that the tornado just seemed like nothing to me."