‘Miracle Baby’ Found Buried Under Wreckage of Home Destroyed

From Tuscola County comes an incredible story of survival after storms roared through the area late last night and early this morning.

As the storms approached the Millington, Joe Soyring and Nichole Opperman prepared to take their kids to safety.

Before they could gather their family, Soyring and Opperman fell into the basement of the house.

“Next thing you know, the house started shaking. Both of us thought it was an earthquake. And the next thing you know, I got sucked down into the basement…and I watched the tornado go that way,” Soyring recalled.

When they crawled out of the wreckage, Soyring and Opperman found three-year-old Makayla, but couldn’t find their 15-month-old son, Blake, who had been sleeping in a crib when the storm hit.

Neighbor Jeff Hawks came running when he heard the screams for help.

“We’re looking all over the baby. I mean, we scoured the whole three acres over here, the whole three acres on my side, and we couldn’t find the baby,” Hawks told ABC12’s Randy Conat.

“All of a sudden, I heard this little whimper and I told everybody to be quiet so we could hear it. And the baby was under this huge pile of debris, probably about this deep (motioning about five feet high) — floor rafters, you know, everything.”

They pulled apart the pile to find Blake very much alive. “The crib had flipped over, and the mattress was the only thing that saved the baby. The mattress was on top of the baby, but I mean there was thousands of pounds of stuff wrapped over this baby. I don’t know how he made it.”

The crib and Blake were about 25 feet from the house. He suffered minor cuts and bruises, but is otherwise fine.

Source: ABC12