Last Tuesday morning (March 3,2020), a little after midnight, my phone alerted me that there was a Tornado Warning in the area. I turned on the TV just in time to watch the News Channel 5 station get hit dead on by a tornado. ( and there's the Reporter's view ).
Shortly after that, it started raining pretty hard at my house, and the lightning flashed to a green sky. I knew it was coming our way.
I ran to get my wife out of bed and get downstairs with our son. We made it about halfway there before we lost electricity. The tornado touched down about a thousand feet from my house. It was over pretty quickly.
It was late, but my neighbors were out checking on each other. It was really too dark to see the full extent of the damage, but my block fared better than just a block over. Amazingly, I don't think anyone was seriously injured, but we did have a lot of downed trees and damaged houses.
We got electricity back yesterday.
Community response has been TREMENDOUS!
The day after the tornado hit, a friend of mine came over to help me cut up some trees. While we were doing that, another guy came up with his chainsaw to help cut. He didn't want money. He just wanted to help. Then we had volunteers from all over come into the area to help with cleanup. They finished cutting up my downed trees and hauled all of the stuff out to the street. All within just a few hours. The city has been coming by to haul off the debris.
Nashville Electric Service has put in a HEROIC effort and got our power back on.
My wife and I have been living out of hotels this week. I have some very good things to say about one, and some not so good things to say about another. When I get a chance this weekend, I'll post up some of the photos I took and videos I found, and I'll add a little more detail to my post.
There's still a lot of cleanup to do. The school my wife teaches at was severely damaged and classes had to be relocated. And there are other houses and areas of town with A LOT of damage still. A neighborhood just a few miles away from me was pretty much flattened.
We got lucky.
And despite the destruction, the people here are another reminder of why I love living in this town.
Thank you, Nashville.
