Having the family car “swallowed” by a giant hole may have been a little more than Debbie Mathis anticipated on her first visit to Meridian’s new IHOP restaurant. But she said the experience won’t derail any future visits by her family to the restaurant on Frontage Road.

    “We’re not going to let that stop us from going back,” said Mathis, whose car is among 14 vehicles still trapped from when the restaurant’s parking lot caved in Saturday evening.

    “This is just an inconvenience; it’s not the end of the world,” she said. “We’re just thankful that to our knowledge, nobody was hurt. It could have been a whole lot worse.”

    Mathis, her husband, Todd, and their son, Noah, decided to visit the restaurant for a family night out.

    “Our son is a freshman at Mississippi College and he’d come home for the weekend, so we decided to try it out,” she said.

    The restaurant was full, however Mathis said they did not have to wait as long as expected.

    “I think people earlier than us had to wait quite a bit long. Our server said it would be about 20 minutes, but it wasn’t that long,” she said.

    The family had only been seated a few minutes when the restaurant went dark.

    “We’d placed our orders and were drinking our water when the lights went out,” Mathis said. “The first thought was, ‘That was odd,’ and then you heard what could have been a transformer so you say, ‘Well, that’s why the lights are out. We’ll just sit here a second and see what happens.'”

    Mathis said the next sound was similar to a train, followed by “a little bit” of shaking.

    “I’ve never been through an earthquake; I guess it could have been a tremor feeling,” she said. “It happened three or four times.”

    When a customer went to the window and saw the hole, mayhem ensued, Mathis said.

    “They hollered, ‘It’s an earthquake!’ and that’s when people started to panic,” she said. “We just kind of calmly sat there. We thought it was something minor and we would just sit there until we figured out what we needed to do. After it was all over, we realized it could have been a lot worse.”

    Mathis said she was told Sunday it would be a couple of days before she could get her vehicle. However, she learned Monday it might take longer and possibly with unfortunate results.

    “They said it’s going to be several days before they can get the cars out of there,” she said. “They also told me that they don’t expect them to be worth anything when they get them out. Some of the cars have a lot of stuff piled on top of them and they’re crunching up under each other. Mine doesn’t seem too terribly bad. But if it continued to shift or move it could cause more damage, I guess.”

    Fortunately, Mathis still had a family vehicle she had been trying to sell.

    “I think the good Lord knew we were going to need that car, so he didn’t let us sell it,” she said.

    Happy no one was injured in the incident, Mathis said her son was a little disappointed about one aspect.

    “My son had ordered chicken and waffles, and when he talked to ‘ABC News’ and ‘Good Morning America” about the incident, he also told them that he had not gotten his chicken and waffles,” she said jokingly.