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By Aliss Higham
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A 4-month-old baby has miraculously survived after being swept up by a tornado and blown into a tree.
Sydney Moore, from Clarksville, Tennessee, was inside her mobile home with her partner and two young children when a tornado hit the area on Saturday, December 9.
Images from the aftermath show a bassinet that had been blown into a tree, wrapped around the trunk. When the twister hit their home, their 4-month-old, named Lord, was inside the pen and was blown into the air. He was later discovered in a fallen tree by his parents.
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Moore said that her partner attempted to keep Lord from being swept up by the tornado. "He went to try to grab Lord off the bassinet and the roof had already came off. The bassinet was the first thing to go up, but Lord stayed in the bassinet, in the air, like he seen him in the bassinet in the air," Moore added, according to Nashville's News Channel 5. "They did two twirls, he said, then they got thrown."
"He was just holding on to the bassinet the whole time, and they went into circles. I was pretty sure he was dead, and we weren't going to find him," Moore said. "But he's here, and that's by the grace of God.
"I swear to God he looked like he was placed in a tree with a gash on the side of his face, right here. It was a deep gash, but they glued it shut," she added.
The family came perilously close to tragedy, with Moore adding she shielded her other child, 1-year-old Princeton, with her own body. "I ran to the back bedroom, jumped on top of Princeton," Moore said. "By the time I jumped on Princeton, the walls collapsed, and then that's when the siren went off."
One of the family pets is still missing, a grey cat, while their other feline has been recovered.
In a fundraiser posted on GoFundMe, the children's aunt Caitlyn Moore said Lord needed his ear glued due to a cut. "Luckily everyone came out with minor cuts and bruises," she wrote, adding that Moore's fiancé suffered a "broken arm/shoulder".
"We are told that he looked like he was placed on the tree gently," Caitlyn Moore wrote about the 4-month-old. "Like an angel guided him safely to that spot."
Six people were killed by the tornado as it tore through northern Nashville, Clarksville and the surrounding areas last Saturday evening. Dozens more were injured in the freak-weather incident, with homes and businesses extensively damaged throughout the area.
City of Clarksville Mayor Joe Pitts offered his sympathies over the tragedy. "This is devastating news and our hearts are broken for the families of those who lost loved ones. The City stands ready to help them in their time of grief," he said in statement seen by ABC News.
In a statement given to Newsweek, a spokesperson for the city of Clarksville said: "We are almost at the one-week mark since the tornado struck in areas of the northern part of the City of Clarksville, and the community is showing its remarkable resilience. We mourn with those families of the three people who lost their lives in this powerful tornado.
"We are getting federal assistance now through FEMA, and the community is coming together with a volunteer spirit that is enabling a rapid-response recovery effort. People from throughout the nation are seeing our true volunteer spirit," the statement added. "We won't stop our efforts until every single tornado victim gets the help and support that they need."
President Joe Biden was briefed on the situation by officials, according to a statement seen by Newsweek. "He and Jill are praying for the families of those who lost their lives, and wishing a swift recovery to the dozens of people who suffered injuries," White House spokesperson Jeremy Edwards said.
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