An Aussie mom took a beating from a monster hailstorm during a desperate attempt to shield her infant daughter — and she said she’d do it again in a heartbeat.
Fiona Simpson, 23, was driving home with her 4-month-old daughter and 78-year-old grandmother during the “supercell” thunderstorm that battered Queensland’s South Burnett region on Thursday when she realized she needed to pull over, she told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
“I wasn’t driving very fast because I couldn’t see very well,” Simpson told the outlet. “I couldn’t see in front of me, I couldn’t even see the line on the road.”
Then she heard a loud bang.
“All this rain starts coming in, and the back window where my daughter was was just open … it’s gone,” she added. “It was so scary but there was no time to be afraid … It just all happened so fast.”
She quickly jumped into the back of the car and acted as a human shield for her daughter, she said.
“I looked down and I could see she was screaming but I couldn’t even hear her, that’s how loud it was,” Simpson told the station.
Before long, a second window smashed. Simpson tried to help her grandmother, but both women were pelted with the large hailstones, according to the report.
Once the storm passed, Simpson drove her battered car to a nearby home, where she screamed for help until the residents called an ambulance.
“It wasn’t until I got in the ambulance that I realized that if I didn’t do that, [my daughter] could have been seriously hurt or killed,” she told the outlet. “Anything could have happened.”
Simpson had “significant bruising” to most of her body. Her grandmother shed most of the skin from her left arm, and her right arm was left “completely black” from bruising, according to the report.
Meanwhile, the 4-month-old girl only suffered “small bumps” on her body.
“At the end of the day, all that matters is that we’re alive,” she told the station. “A car can be replaced and bruises can heal and we’re just all safe right now.”
Supercell thunderstorms are often accompanied by damaging hail, and lead to some of Australia’s strongest tornadoes, according to the BBC.
During Thursday’s storm, winds gusted up to 60 miles per hour, damaging buildings and crops. Social media users even reported injured animals.
“It’s just a reminder what Mother Nature can do in such a short period of time,” local resident Steven Harland told the outlet.