Traffic Exchange

May 21, 2013

Dog found, on live TV, in tornado rubble

Dog found on live TV: A 45-year resident of Moore, Okla., thought she'd lost her dog in the tornado. But on live TV, her dog was found in the rubble of her home.

Amid the devastation of Moore, Okla., TV viewers of a CBS affiliate were able to witness a woman's prayers answered.

Barbara Garcia stands in the rubble of her home, a bleak skyline behind her. KWTV News 9 reporter Anna Werner asks her what happened when the F4 tornado came barreling down on her home Monday afternoon. Ms. Garcia says that she was sitting in her bathroom with her dog in her lap when the twister hit. She never lost consciousness but moments later she was laying in the debris of her shattered home, with minor scrapes and bruises. But the dog was gone.

"[The house] was there, and it was gone.... I had some stuff on top of me and I started wigglin'"

"I hollered for my little dog, and, he didn't answer. He didn't come," says Garcia. Then, she adds with a tinge of fatal resignation, pointing to the flattened house, "So, I know he's in here somewhere."

Dead? Apparently not.

The reporter suddenly spots the dog's head sticking out of the debris. "The dog! The dog! The dog! Hi, puppy!" says Werner stooping down to pet the head of the missing Scottish Terrier.

Garcia and the reporter lift some crumpled metal debris off the dog, and he squirms free. Garcia caresses the matted fur of her "Bowsie."

"Well, I thought that God had just answered one prayer, to let me be OK," she says with tears welling up. "But he answered both of them."