A teacher was sucked out of her classroom by the powerful winds of a tornado near downtown Los Angeles on March 22.
The frightening moment was captured in a cell phone video, and involved a teacher at Vail High School in Montebello, California, according to NBC4 Los Angeles.
The teacher reportedly cracked open the door after her students told her someone had run outside, at which point the wind blew the door open and pulled her off her feet, sucking her outside, according to NBC4.
“All of a sudden, we opened the door a little bit and then we just see a gust of wind starting to build up and then it got faster and faster,” said a high school senior who reportedly came to the teacher’s rescue.
The teacher sustained minor injuries from the incident, according to NBC4.
This was the strongest twister to hit the Los Angeles metro area since 1983, according to the National Weather Service.
With peak winds of 110 miles per hour, the tornado wreaked havoc, damaging 17 buildings in an industrial warehouse and commercial business district, according to NWS.
One building suffered an almost total roof collapse, and an HVAC unit was ejected from the top of the structure, the NWS said.
The tornado, which touched down on the ground for about two or three minutes, according to the NWS, also damaged multiple cars and uprooted a large pine tree.
Tornados are rare in California, but this was the second twister to hit the Golden State within 24 hours.
The NWS confirmed that a “weak, narrow” tornado touched down at a mobile home park about 100 miles away, near Santa Barbara, on March 21, damaging around 25 mobile homes.
These tornados are the latest in a series of severe weather events to hit California in recent weeks, including catastrophic flooding and rare blizzards.
This article was originally published on TODAY.com
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