Tornado activity damages homes and buildings in Tennessee.
Credit: Reuters Photo
Reed Arnold was watching TV on Saturday at his home in Clarksville when he saw a warning on his phone. He stepped outside and filmed the swiftly moving clouds and a looming tornado. Minutes later, the twister hit his neighborhood.
“One second you are sitting in your house, and all of a sudden, all this carnage happens,” he said.
A sober mood gripped Clarksville and other communities in middle Tennessee on Sunday as crews searched for survivors and officials surveyed the damage from severe storms and tornadoes that killed at least six people in the region and injured more than 60.
The storms and tornadoes, part of a broader stretch of severe weather that swept across the South on Saturday, left a swath of destruction that included parts of Clarksville, near the Kentucky border, where three people died, and communities around Nashville, where three others were killed.
On Sunday, Clarksville, Nashville and other Tennessee cities and towns were working to clear away debris from a landscape where pink insulation clung to tree limbs, children’s toys lay crumpled and flags had been shredded to ribbons.
Officials in Montgomery County, which includes Clarksville, said two adults and one child had died as a result of a tornado. On Sunday, officials said they could not confirm if the victims were a family. Officials were conducting secondary searches and preparing for the next phase of recovery.
Jimmie Edwards, chief of Montgomery County Emergency Services, said 62 injured people had been taken to medical facilities, including nine who were transferred to Vanderbilt University Medical Center and were in critical condition.
“This morning, we have a lot of families who are suffering,” Edwards said Sunday. “Our hearts are especially heavy with those that have lost some, and certainly with those that have lost all.”
More than 52,000 customers were without power in Tennessee, and Mayor Joe Pitts of Clarksville said in a news conference Sunday that it may take a couple of weeks for power to be fully restored.
Residents said the midday tornado took them by surprise, giving them little time to seek shelter.
Matthew Burns got a panicked call from his wife and three children, who were working at his restaurant, Dream Wingz, while he was out delivering an order.
“All I heard was, ‘Get to the kitchen, get to the kitchen,’” he said.
The tornado spun Burns’ vehicle, he said. But his family was safe and the restaurant was still intact once he made it back.
“We’re still standing up,” he said Sunday morning, after a night of serving about 1,500 chicken wings to people in shelters. “Some people don’t even have a roof.”
Montgomery County Mayor Wes Golden called the tornado a “catastrophic event,” adding that the county would need a lot of resources and time to recover. Schools in the county will be closed Monday and Tuesday, he said.
“We’ve been on the ground, and we’ve seen firsthand neighbors helping neighbors,” Golden said, choking with emotion. “I’ve never been so proud to be mayor.”
In Clarksville, Rachel Tunstall and her husband were pulling their cars out from under what had been their roof Sunday, just two months after they got married and moved into their apartment.
“This was our bedroom,” Tunstall, 33, said, pointing to a space now missing a wall and a ceiling.
Minutes after seeing the tornado warning on her phone, Tunstall had heard the winds, felt pressure in her ears and told her husband they needed to shelter in their downstairs half-bathroom. On Sunday, outside what was left of her unit, she packed plastic containers with items that could be salvaged, including Christmas ornaments that the newlyweds had recently hung.
“My husband and I are both OK,” Tunstall said, “and that is the blessing.”
Damage from the storms was also reported in Alabama, where high winds tore down trees and hail the size of pingpong balls rained down.
Severe weather also made its way through Mississippi, hitting areas southeast of Jackson, and the Florida Panhandle. While it might seem odd to think of tornadoes at this time of year, an average of 43 tornadoes are reported every December across the United States, typically across a cluster of southern states.
In Davidson County, which includes Nashville, officials said three people had died as a result of the severe weather. Mayor Freddie O’Connell of Nashville declared a state of emergency for the city and for Davidson County, allowing the area to quickly receive state and federal resources.
During a news conference Sunday, O’Connell said 26,000 customers in Nashville did not have power. An official with Nashville Electric Service said that Hendersonville — which is just northeast of Nashville and suffered extensive damage — will have prolonged outages. Officials said they did not know the number of storm-related injuries.
Three weather-related injuries, including a head injury, were reported in Dresden, west of Nashville, said Ray Wiggington, emergency management director for Weakley County. At least one mobile home was flipped over, he said.
All of the injuries occurred on a single road in Dresden, he said, adding that it was unclear whether the damage had been caused by “an actual tornado or just straight-line winds.”
He said that a powerful EF3 tornado, which has winds of 136 to 165 mph, “hit almost in the exact same area” in December 2021, adding, “That’s on everybody’s mind.”