Kirk Gawith doesn’t know what it’s like to be hit by a tornado.

Though witnesses say one of four twisters that tore into North Platte and the surrounding area last week lifted the Bushnell resident’s truck into the air and spun it violently over I-80, the veteran driver remembers little of the dramatic incident.

“I blacked out,” he said. “I felt it hit and the next thing I knew I was up against a tree.”

He crawled out from the crumpled cab of his 2001 Peterbilt through the passenger door. The windshield popped out sometime during the wild ride and fell into the median. Pieces of truck and trailer lay scattered across the highway and nearby fields.  In fact, one of the first things he recalls saying to the officer who first approached him after the tornado left the area was a simple inquiry: “Where’s my trailer?”

The cab itself looked as if it had been through a metal crusher. But he escaped with a few cuts and some bruises--nothing more, at least physically.

“I should have never walked away,” Gawith observed. “Somebody was looking out for me.”

Gawith was heading east on I-80 towards Hastings to pick up a load of meat destined for Omaha when he encountered the storm. He never saw the funnel and assumes it caught him broadsides as it ripped across the highway.

“They say it sounds like a train,” he noted. “I didn’t hear anything.”

He began driving over the road trucks in 1992 and this was the first time he had ever been in an accident of any kind. Now he’s uncertain if he’ll be able to step inside a cab again.

The incident was just that frightening.

“Maybe I should become a tornado chaser,” he quipped.

Four funnels touched down on Sunday, March 18. Two rated EF1 or EF2, but the other two were more monstrous EF3s, flailing winds at up to 165 miles per hour. One of these shredded a North Platte neighborhood. Early damage estimates approached the $5 million range, though that number may not include vehicles or railway cars toppled by the storm.

The tornado that tossed Gawith’s truck across four lanes and into a tree left him rather shaken, despite a hesitant sense of humor about the event. He is still waiting for the insurance company to arrive at a decision. The Bushnell driver owned his own rig.

“It’s supposed to be red and black, but I don’t know if you can tell that right now,” he said of the tangled cab.

His mind was foggy when he emerged from the wreck after a moment of unconsciousness. He does recall a glimpse of the storm as it sped away from the Interstate.

Few truckers--indeed, few people--know first hand the experience of being twisted inside a tornado.

“I’m lucky, I guess,” he decided.