Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
DEADLY TORNADOES SHRED NASHVILLE
24 killed as early morning twisters jolt Nashville area
Dominique Hammond and her daughter Analise Hammond stand outside their home in North Nashville after devastating tornadoes caused widespread damage Tuesday morning. More than 20 people have been killed.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Tornadoes ripped across Tennessee as families slept early Tuesday, shredding more than 140 buildings and burying people in piles of rubble and wrecked basements. At least 24 people were killed, some before they could even get out of bed, authorities said.
Sirens and cellphone alerts sounded, but the twisters that struck in the hours after midnight moved so quickly that many people in their path could not flee to safer areas.
“It hit so fast, a lot of folks didn’t have time to take shelter,” Putnam County Mayor Randy Porter said. “Many of these folks were sleeping.”
Early findings by National Weather Service survey teams indicated that the damage just east of Nashville was inflicted by a tornado of at least EF3 intensity, the agency said.
One twister wrecked homes and businesses across a 10-mile stretch of Nashville that included parts of downtown. It smashed more than three dozen buildings, including destroying the tower and stained glass of a historic church. Another tornado damaged more than 100 structures along a 2-mile path of destruction in Putnam County, wiping some homes from their foundations and depositing the wreckage far away.
Daybreak revealed landscapes littered with blowndown walls and roofs, snapped power lines and huge broken trees, making many city streets and rural roads impassable. Schools, courts, transit lines and an airport were closed. More than a dozen polling stations were also damaged, forcing Super Tuesday voters to wait in long lines at alternative sites.
The death toll climbed steadily as first responders gingerly pulled apart wreckage.
Sheriff Eddie Farris said only 30% of the Putnam County disaster area had received a “hard check” by midday. “A lot of these homes had basements, and we’re hopeful there are still people down in there,” he said.
In Putnam County, 80 miles east of Nashville, trees, vehicles and other loose, heavy items had completely flattened houses and businesses. A van of longtime customers at a local diner — who proudly stated they ate there every morning — arrived to help clear debris just as Gov. Bill Lee stopped by to tour the devastation.
In one neighborhood, volunteers had found five bodies by Tuesday afternoon. Neighbors and sheriff’s officers were still looking for two more.
Nashville residents walked around in dismay on streets and sidewalks littered with debris, in neighborhoods where missing walls and roofs left living rooms and kitchens exposed. Mangled power lines and broken trees came to rest on cars, streets and piles of rubble.
“It is heartbreaking. We have had loss of life all across the state,” said Lee, who ordered nonessential state workers to stay home and then boarded a helicopter to survey the damage.
President Donald Trump spoke with the governor by phone and pledged federal assistance, the White House said. Trump also announced plans to visit the disaster area Friday.
The tornadoes were spawned by a line of severe storms that stretched from Alabama into western Pennsylvania.
In Nashville, the twister’s path was mostly north and east of the heart of downtown, sparing many of the city’s biggest tourism draws — the honky tonks of Broadway, the Grand Ole Opry House, the storied Ryman Auditorium and the convention center.
Instead the storm tore through the largely African American areas of Bordeaux and North Nashville as well as neighborhoods transformed by a recent building boom. Germantown and East Nashville are two of the city’s trendiest hot spots, with restaurants, music venues, high-end apartment complexes and rising home prices threatening to drive out longtime residents.
“The dogs started barking before the sirens went off. They knew what was coming,” said Paula Wade, of East Nashville. “Then we heard the roar. Something made me just sit straight up in bed, and something came through the window right above my head. If I hadn’t moved, I would’ve gotten a face full of glass.”
The roof came crashing down on Ronald Baldwin and Harry Nahay in the bedroom of their one-story brick home in East Nashville. “We couldn’t get out,” Baldwin said. “And so I just kept kicking and kicking until we finally made a hole.”
The roaring wind woke Evan and Carlie Peters, also in East Nashville, but they had no time to reach the relative safety of an interior bathroom.
“Within about 10 seconds, the house started shaking,” Carlie Peters said. “I jumped on top of the ground. He jumped on top of me. The ceiling landed on top of him. We’re grateful to be alive.”
With more than a dozen Super Tuesday polling places in Nashville’s Davidson County damaged, voters were sent to other locations, some of them with long lines.
Damage to the power grid left more than 44,000 customers in the dark. The weather also damaged gas lines, water mains and cellphone towers, authorities said.