THURSDAy, MARCH 5 , 2020. THE WASHINGTON POST eZ M2 A
“Never seen anything like it,”
he said.
The Nashville twisters crossed
the paths taken by both the
infamous 1933 and 1998 torna-
does that previously tore
through the area, The Post re-
ported.
To rnadoes are especially dan-
gerous at night. A 2018 study
found that nearly half of all
tornadoes in Te nnessee oc-
curred at night, and more than
60 percent of these tornadoes
resulted in deaths. This storm
was the deadliest in the United
States since 23 people were
killed in Lee County, Ala., on
march 3, 2019 — exactly one
year earlier.
[email protected]
[email protected]gowen reported from lawrence,
Kan. gee reported from nashville.
Meryl Kornfield, Kim bellware,
Matthew cappucci and timothy
bella in Washington contributed to
this report.Under the collapsed roof, she
could spot some of the supplies
from her classroom. No sign of
“Lucky Girl,” though.
“It’s stuff,” oakley said,
straightening up. “We’re not
lo oking at l ittle feet under these
boards.”
Some residents sifted through
debris to find belongings that the
high winds had stolen.
In the Donelson area, Jack
odum and a security g uard stood
at the entrance of three office
buildings he owned, preparing to
retrieve records and tools from a
safe room.
While two of the buildings
were mostly intact, the storm
had ripped the roof off the third,
snarling plasterboard with pa-
perwork, buckets and branches,
and yard upon yard of yellow
insulation.
But the thing that puzzled
odum most was the heavy-duty
dumpster that had flown maybe
1,000 feet from a neighbor’s
property and landed in his.and Wilson counties were signifi-
cantly damaged. The Te nnessee
Department of Education is
planning to relocate affected
schools, the Te nnessee Emergen-
cy management Agency said
Wednesday.
Donelson Christian Academy,
a private school in suburban
Nashville, was pulverized. Barb
oakley, who teaches prekinder-
garten there, was still reeling
Wednesday. S he wiped back tears
as she surveyed the damage.
“We live by the weather,” re-
flected oakley, who just hours
before the storm read a book
called “Lucky Girl” to the 4-year-
olds in her c lass — a story about a
family that survives a tornado
only to find the baby is missing.
The whole town joins a frantic
search until the baby is found,
safely sleeping in her crib in a
pasture.
“I hope that helped them,”
oakley said, w ho appeared dazed
by the destruction s he was seeing
for the first time.continued, officials said gas
leaks were “a major concern.”
About 250 electrical poles were
downed or damaged, according
to Nashville Electric Service.
Three or four agricultural
buildings at the Te nnessee State
University were damaged. The
historical Te nnessee State Prison
was also destroyed.
In an interview with fox News
on Wednesday, the governor said
he spoke with Trump as well as
fEmA officials Tuesday.
“The coordination between
federal officials and our state
officials is what we need and it
has already begun,” Lee said.
Trump is expected to visit the
area friday.
“our hearts are full of sorrow
for the lives that were lost,”
Trump said Tuesday. “It’s a vi-
cious thing, those tornadoes. I’ve
seen many of them during a
three-year period. If you’re in
their path, bad things happen.
really bad things happen.”
Several schools in Davidsonfour generations w ho gathered to
help save photos and a jigsaw
puzzle made from pictures of the
grandchildren.
Amid the damage and grief for
the dying, there were many sto-
ries of miracles in Cookeville on
Wednesday. A family of five with
two puppies huddled in a down-
stairs bathroom while the up-
stairs flew across the road. A
couple survived being flung from
their house, which is now a just
cinder-block foundation and a
pile of rubble.
The National Weather Service
had s ent a lerts out just before the
twisters took shape, but the
storms moved quickly, making it
difficult for many to get to safety
in time.
“It hit so fast, a lot of folks
didn’t have time to take shelter,”
Porter had said Tuesday. “many
of these folks were sleeping.”
In Nashville, where at least 48
buildings collapsed, according to
fire Chief William Swann, the
clean up and restoration workPHotos by MAtt McclAIn/tHe WAsHIngton Postcording to the National Weather
Service.
In Putnam County, which was
the hardest hit, at least 18 were
killed, officials said.
The destruction stretched for
50 miles across four counties,
and Gov. Bill Lee (r), who sur-
veyed the area via helicopter,
said it will take days to assess the
damage.
In Putnam County, about an
hour east of Nashville, rescuers
were searching through piles of
rubble to find additional victims
with several areas left to go,
county mayor randy Porter said
at a midday briefing Wednesday.
The death toll in Putnam
County itself was still 18, he said,
“but we have reason to believe
that could go up today.”
Putnam County officials said
five of the 18 killed were children
under 13. The youngest w as 2 or 3
years old.
As of Wednesday night, 17
were still missing. D isrupted cell
service had made it difficult to
track down loved ones, Porter
said.
The area where so many
homes and lives were lost — a
clutter of shredded buildings,
upended cars and random ob-
jects displaced by wind — re-
mained cordoned off Wednes-
day. Porter said the community
had been inundated with food
and some 2,400 volunteers, so
many that they could take no
more in the tightly restricted
area.
Some residents who had fled
the howling winds began trick-
ling back Wednesday to see what
could be salvaged.
Linda Leath was awoken from
a dead sleep by a warning mes-
sage on her phone Tuesday. She
and her husband had tried to get
to a safe space until a great gust
forced them back.
The bedroom w here they land-
ed, shrouded in insulation, is the
only room that now exists —
three sherbet-green walls, a ce-
dar chest and a double bed, all
for the world to see.
“I remember seeing the chan-
delier from the dining room fly
right by my head,” Leath said. “If
it had hit me, it would have killed
me.”
Instead, clutching a President
Trump hat that she rescued from
the rubble and thanking a small
army of family and volunteers,
Leath looks in disbelief at a
neighborhood she no longer rec-
ognizes.
“There were houses down
there, modern ones. All gone.
And I don’t know if they ever
found Phyllis,” she said referring
to a neighbor who lived across
the brow of the hill. “A ll those
houses are gone.”
“It’s a miracle,” said Leath’s
husband Billy, the patriarch of
TornAdoes from A
Picking up the pieces, counting the miracles
ABoVe: Karla shoulders combs through debris at the home of her cousin Melissa davis in the donelson area of nashville on Wednesday, a day after Tennessee saw
tornadoes that killed more than 24 people. The twisters cut a line of destruction across four counties. ToP: Billy and Linda Leath lived in what was the house at front,
in Cookeville. They were in the bedroom and survived. “It’s a miracle,” Billy Leath said. For video from Tennessee, visit wapo.st/Tornadoes.