HENRYVILLE HIGH SCHOOL DESTROYED BY TORNADO 3-2-2012 (35).jpg

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Samuel Gilles remembers sitting on the floor in a bathroom inside Henryville Elementary School on March 2, 2012, with a soap dispenser leaking on the ground and a backpack over his head.

He was 8 at the time. Schoolmates Jackson Tobey, 6, and Jackson Bagshaw,  7, were also huddled in the restroom. All were too young to grasp the danger lurking from a looming tornado.

"It seemed like a perfect day, and then, like an instant, it was like a nightmare," Gilles said. "It's mind-boggling to think about."

An EF-4 twister made a direct impact on the Henryville school. Winds of 170 miles per ripped apart, tossed and shattered everything in its path.  

Gilles, Bagshaw and Tobey were part of a small class. Three of about 35 people who rode out the storm on the elementary side of the school, when tornadoes hit Henryville. The boys had stayed when the school dismissed early for normal day care.

Their memories are vivid from how the day began with an assembly and teachers putting on a play to celebrate Dr. Suess' birthday to the moment of impact shortly after 3 p.m.

"Hearing the high school gym collapse in on itself is crazy," Gilles said. "I always refer to it as trains from all different directions, and it gets so loud and you can like feel this shake."

"It was deafening," Bagshaw said. "The pressure made your ears pop, and the floor was vibrating."

This was one of the first times the students shared the experience of surviving the storm. They weren't sitting in the restroom where they remembered at the moment of impact. Right before the hit, the boys scurried into a back room in the elementary school office huddling with flashlights after the power went out as they sat under a conference table

"I feel like it was yesterday, " Tobey, now 16, said in an interview with WDRB News. "The ceiling was hanging down, and there was green fuzzy stuff hanging."

"You could hear like electrical wires buzzing and stuff," Bagshaw, now 17, echoed. "It's always been a strange type of feeling to know I went through that at such a young age."

After the twister passed, the students recalled the utter destruction being so great they couldn't walk out of the front of the school. Shattered glass, toppled furniture and twisted steel made it impassable.

"There were people directing us with flashlights to go out through the cafeteria," Tobey said. "The tables were displaced, and the door was too dangerous to climb through because there was glass everywhere. Once it was my turn to climb out the window, we got word there was going to be a second tornado."

Tobey remembers being passed back through the window and rushed back to the school office. But this time was different. It wasn't the sound of a train that stuck out. It was what he described as "hard rain."

That was when a second EF-1 twister roared through Henryville bringing golf ball size hail.

"I thought I was going to die, and that was no fun," Bagshaw said. "Me and Gilles were right next to each other. I remember just hiding and holding onto each other and crying."

Henryville is a K-12 campus with elementary on one side and a junior/senior high on the other. Another 35 people were on the other side of the school, and pictures tell the tale of what they endured. The images show mangled steel, tossed desks, walls flatted and debris everywhere.

"We started to walk throughout the building to see the damages," said Kyle Lewis, assistant principal of Henryville Junior Senior High School. "The ceiling tiles were out, the whole front office, group presentation room, cafeteria had blown away."

Lewis hunkered down in the athletics office about 30 feet from the gym floor as the walls came tumbling down.

"We thought for sure there would be way more fatalities than there were," he said.

Miraculously, there were none at the school thanks, in part, to the quick thinking of Glenn Riggs and Troy Albert. The principals dismissed the schools early thinking if the storm hit with more than 1,000 students on campus, it would be a mass casualty event.

"We were standing in the back parking lot when the tornado horn went off, and we were mutually looking at each other and said, 'We gotta go,'" Riggs said.

"I'm just thankful I believed in the things that are true," Albert said. "The Lord looked out for me that day and gave me a purpose to be on this Earth to do some other things."

IMAGES | Henryville High School in 2012 after being destoyed by tornado

Henryville changed its safety plan after the March 2 tornado. Albert said spots they thought were safe were not, so safety zones in hallways that saw catastrophic damage were moved to interior classrooms.

Life is much different at the school 10years later. Riggs and Albert, like many faculty members, moved on, and students who were there for the disaster are few, as most graduated.

A mural is a visual reminder in the elementary hall, but for those who lived it there is a common bond.

"The fact that we survived is a second birthday for me because it could have easily gone the other way," Albert said.

"It's a prayerful day" Riggs agreed, as he fought back tears. "It's a day I just thank God."

That day still lives on for the youngest students

"Anytime there's bad weather or tornadoes or something like that, it kind of gives me a sense of panic,' Tobey said.

"It lead me to some problems like really bad anxiety problem," Bagshaw shared.

"Sometimes when I go into the elementary I'll stop for a minute because I'll see it," Gilles said. "I can see parts where there wasn't a ceiling, it takes over my vision. It takes me a minute to take a deep breath."

For the children of the storm, March 2, 2012 was life-altering, life-affirming and life-defining all at once.

"I want to be a meteorologist. The tornado really inspired me to go into that field," Tobey said.

" I want to become a police officer or like emergency services, in part,  because of the people who helped us that day," Bagshaw said.

Henryville students finished the year in temporary classrooms in Scottsburg and New Albany. The school was rebuilt in five months and reopened in August 2012.

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