Mobile phone video captured the moment a female teacher was dragged from her classroom and thrown to the ground. during a tornado in Montebello.
The video shows the teacher standing by a door at Vail High School as students tell her someone has run away. As she opens the door, a strong gust of wind blows it open, knocking the teacher out of the classroom and onto the floor.
A student told sister station NBC4 that the teacher opened the door to the second-floor classroom because another student was on the ledge.
Hundreds of residents witnessed a tornado in Montebello on Wednesday morning, and they shared their experience with Telemundo 52 and NBCLA.
“He basically opens the door for the student to come in, and the whole door, he flies with the door and it was crazy,” the student said. “My first instinct was to go grab her because she’s so small, she’s so small. And yeah, so it was crazy. Everything was crazy.”
The video showed students helping the teacher to stand up. He would have been slightly injured.
The tornado damaged 17 buildings in the city, 11 of them marked with redaccording to Montebello spokesman Michael Chee.
Ariel Cohen, meteorologist in charge of the Los Angeles/Oxnard National Weather Service, confirmed that a tornado had caused the damage. He said crews were still monitoring the area to determine the strength of the tornado.
The damaging winds followed a day of severe weather that included a tornado warning Tuesday evening for central Ventura County and southwestern Los Angeles County. The system was expected to move on Wednesday evening, but not before another wave of scattered showers.
In the community of Carpinteria, Santa Barbara County, the NWS has confirmed that a a tornado damaged a mobile home park Tuesday night.
This story first appeared on Telemundo 52’s sister station NBCLA. Click here to read this story in English.