Woman Who Lost Husband In Friday Night Tornado Learning 'To Live Without Him'
BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- Cleanup continues Monday from Friday's deadly tornado in southeast Baltimore.
Two men were killed there when an Amazon facility partially collapsed.
One woman who was widowed by the storm had to wait for hours while crews searched for her husband underneath debris.
It's the heart-wrenching reality of a deadly tornado's emotional aftermath.
"We really need to learn how to live without him. I don't know how we're gonna do that," Fatima Espana said.
Espana is mourning the loss of her 37-year-old husband, Israel.
He was killed Friday night when a rare tornado tore through southeast Baltimore, slamming into the Amazon facility on Holabird Ave. at 105 miles per hour.
Video from inside shows the huge hole where a 50-foot concrete wall crumbled, and where Israel had been working, near his semi-truck.
For seven hours, until Saturday morning, Espana waited as crews dug and searched for her husband underneath debris.
"I wanted to believe that he was still alive. I started praying and I said, 'No, he's going to be okay,'" Espana said.
Israel -- a father of three -- and another man, 54-year-old Andrew Lindsey, were pinned by the toppled walls and did not survive.
The first tornado deaths in Maryland in 16 years.
[REPORTER: "So, what would you want people to know about [Israel]?"] "He was the best dad in the world, he was. Everything he did, it was for his kids," his wife added.
She's now learning to fill the role of "dad" for her three young sons after mere moments of unexpected, violent weather changed their lives forever.
Espana say Amazon has reached out to provide support to her family, even coming to her son's soccer game on Sunday, a game Israel had planned to attend.
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