Poplar Bluff native's work 'destroyed' in Jefferson City tornado

As sirens were wailing warnings tornadoes were heading into Jefferson City, Rene Sisk, formerly of Poplar Bluff, thought it was her alarm clock so she kept pushing it away. She wasn’t ready to go to work at Sonic.

“I was asleep when the first sirens and text messages to take cover went off late Wednesday night,” said the 2018 graduate of Poplar Bluff High School.

Sisk admits to “waking up in the middle of the night and my fiancé (Dakota Head) was trying to get in touch with his mom who lives on the outskirts of Jefferson City.”

Rene Sisk, right, and fiancé Dakota Head Photo provided

Sisk finally realized a tornado had hit the community.

She and Dakota moved to the state capital last year after she decided to study journalism and photography at Columbia College. She worked at Sonic on South Broadway in Poplar Bluff and transferred to one of the three Sonics located in Jefferson City.

The Sonic at which she worked was located 10 minutes from her apartment. It was destroyed, but “my apartment building did not get hit,” Sisk said.

Three workers who were in the Sonic building when the tornado hit went into the walk-in freezer for shelter. A customer who was parked in the drive thru decided to stay in his car. He survived. One of the employee’s car was blown away and another one was beaten up so badly it could not be driven. The Sonic workers waited for the fire department and police to get them out.

The Sonic owners are trying to arrange the schedules at the other two Sonics so everyone has work. Sisk said, everyone is “playing it by ear.”

The couple stayed inside their apartment calling and messaging before the alarms and sirens started again. Sisk’s next-door neighbor climbed to the bathtub when the second alarm sounded. The first tornado hit down the road and the second storm hit downtown, she explained.

After contacting everyone she could, she and Dakota decided to help his mother’s friend, who lived in a mobile home court which was hit by the storm. Traveling to the edge of town, the duo spotted a part of a semi truck on one side of road and another part of the truck was a tangled in a tree across the highway. While the friend’s mobile home was destroyed, she’s fine and staying in a safe place

“Everyone here is fine, we just have to recover,” said Sisk, who was active in JROTC and the SHO-ME Band during high school. Her mother is Christine Sisk of Poplar Bluff.