SALVISA, Ky. (LEX 18) — When the severe weather sirens went off in Salvisa, Joseph Moore and his wife Jessica went outside to pick up loose items that might blow away. According to Joseph, the sirens go off so frequently that he thought this storm would pass just like the others.
Just a few minutes later, Joseph tells us he thought his life was endangered.
“It’s that token life flash before your eyes, ‘is this it’ type of thoughts.”
Joseph and Jessica had both gone into the front of their building, which made up the Moore’s JM WeldCo shop. Once inside, the wind blew the front open and ripped off the roof.
“The trusses came down on me and my wife right there in the shop,” Joseph said. “I mean it was kind of a harrowing life flash before you before your eyes experience. You don’t really realize that it’s happening, until it’s come and gone. You hear this big rush and roar of the wind rushing into the structure and it fills the roof off and you just kind of brace yourself.”
Joseph walked around and pointed out parts of the building. Just as the wind tore into the building, Joseph backed his forklift up to the door, trying to help brace the entrance. Meanwhile, Jessica stood next to a large machine locked into the concrete foundation. In these spots, the couple stayed safe while the building crashed around them.
“My wife’s safe, my children are safe, I’m safe. At the end of the day, all of this can be rebuilt,” Joseph said.
Joseph and Jessica left the collapsed shop to check on their kids, still sleeping in the more structurally sound house part of the building. With their house and business gone, the Moore family will move back into their RV.
“[The] kids are resilient. We’ll move into our camper for the next – I mean we lived in a camper out here for seven, eight months while I built this thing,” Joseph said.
Just down the hill from the now-destroyed building, Joseph had already begun work on a larger shop. Now, he hopes to finish the new building by mid-summer so he can resume operations.
“You forage your own way,” Joseph said, “and even when you’re dealt a wrong deal, you just keep on marching. We’ll get this new shop built.”
