CBS:
Severe storms that tore through central Tennessee killed six people Saturday and sent at least 60 others to area hospitals, as homes and businesses were damaged in multiple cities. Almost 40,000 electricity customers were still without power across Tennessee on Sunday morning, according to the tracking site poweroutage.us.
Three people, including a child, were killed after a tornado struck Montgomery County north of Nashville near the Kentucky state line, county officials said in a news release. And the Nashville Emergency Operation Center said in a post on a social media account that another three people were killed by severe storms there.
Montgomery County officials said 62 people were treated for injuries at hospitals overnight. Nine of the injured were transferred from area hospitals to Vanderbilt Medical Center. Jimmy Edwards, chief of Montgomery County Emergency Services, described their conditions as “critical” and “unstable.”
Officials in the city of Clarksville, which is about 50 miles northwest of Nashville and where a 9 p.m. curfew was in effect Sunday for the second night in a row, confirmed three deaths linked to the storm at a news conference. At the time, Clarksville Fire Chief Freddie Montgomery said teams, including special operations crews, were still carrying out secondary searches in the area. more here
Drove thru there last Monday. Sad.
I’ve been in (close to) a tornado in a car – you couldn’t see 2 feet in front of the car and everything was blowing sideways, signs, tree limbs, trees down and dark. scary stuff!
“At the time, Clarksville Fire Chief Freddie Montgomery said teams, including special operations crews, were still carrying out secondary searches in the area. ”
…this means you’ve given up on finding survivors by report,visually, and by simply walking around and yelling, and now send guys into very unstable partial structures to see if there may still be a viable person in the more likely-looking piles of rubble. It’s kind of a weird time because you’re still in a window that you may find salvageable people who simply can’t respond or can’t extricate themselves, but the longer the secondaries go on, the more likely the next person you meet will be no more.
You’re hoping to find a closet, a basement door, an uncollapsed staircase, even a bed where folks found refuge but got trapped inside by debris, making a happy ending possible with a little effort, or someone knocked out or structurally damaged, but reachable and with core systems operational; but sometimes you find someone who’s a no-doubter or even pulse less but not obviously destroyed, but entrapped to a degree that extacting them to a degree that you could usefully render aid would take longer than a heart and brain are likely to remain viable. Principles of triage kick in during mass casualty incidents, as the more time you spend with the unlikely and the dead means the more promising may lose their chance, so hard decisions need to be made; and as for the dead, you mark the area but body recovery will have to wait, lest your delay for the departed makes more work for the mortician.
Hard choices.
And even harder as many live where they work, and may have their own families to worry about. Civilian comms aren’t great at such times, is your wife and kids safe? Do you know? Maybe, maybe NOT.
And more tornadoes may be on the way.
Pray for those who suffered through this nightmare, that they recover from losing property and their injuries and that they suffer no loss of life. Pray for the families of the known dead that they may be comforted and strengthened in their hour of need. Pray for those that may be entrapped that they may yet be swiftly found, and brought back to health by His help and grace.
And Lord, strengthen those who seek them, help them ignore their fatigue, give them ears to hear the faintest cry and eyes to see the smallest sign of life, and protect them from hurt, harm, and danger as they wend. through this nightmare hellscape that used to be a lively neighborhood in the service of others; and mostly, give them the blessing of forgetting when all is done and the last body is recovered, even as you hold Your hand over them to still any further storms.
It is much to ask and I am not worthy but by the blood of Your Son; on that Blood I plead Your Grace and that You show Your power to Your Glory, in the merciful name of Jesus I pray,
Amen.
God Bless them all,
SNS
My daughter and son in law and my 2 granddaughters live in Pleasantview, Tennessee a small-town NW of Nashville and about 20 miles away from Clarksville where this tornado occurred on Sat. afternoon. My son in law Will had actually been to Clarksville Sat. morning to pick up a trampoline that they bought the girls for Christmas. When the tornado hit later that afternoon, they lost power for about 3 and a half hrs. and were in the middle of a ferocious thunderstorm, but no tornado was spotted in their vicinity, but it was still scary as all get out because no one knew if they would get a tornado as well. My daughter tells me that Will and a bunch of neighbors all stood outside watching to see if there were any tornadoes approaching. I for one could never live in a place where there are tornadoes or hurricanes, I’ll stick with the relative safety of the great PNW, thank you.
Have a son who used to live in Clarksville. 😬😨
“…as the storm hit a mobile home community…”
Tornado magnet.
…it seems we’ve been here before…
https://iotwreport.com/25-people-die-after-tornadoes-rip-through-tennessee/
…as an Ohioan I can sympathize. Tornadoes do happen more in some places that others.
But the same is true for wildfires, floods, earthquakes, and hurricanes. There is NO safe place on Earth; our only refuge is in the Lord.
“1 God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
2 Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea;
3 Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof. Selah.”
Psalm 46:1-3
“19 Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:
20 But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:”
Matthew 6:19-20
“1 I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.
2 My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.”
Psalm 121:1-2
Life is loss.
Nothing outside Heaven lasts forever.
May all find the Lord that all may see each other again before His Throne and rejoice in His Light forever indeed
OMG. A few days ago a prayer popped up encouraging readers to pray for protection from storms. Made the mistake of ignoring it. Will find the prayer and hop on it for next time.
This was actually a relatively close one for me because the end of the tornado that hit Clarksville TN on Saturday continued over the state line into the southern part of the Kentucky county I live in. I live in the northern part of the county so while we took shelter all that happened was we lost power for a bit.
And it still continued into the next county east of us. Thankfully there were no injuries just a lot of farm building damage because that part of the county/state is mostly very large farms.
But Clarksville was hit hard. If i understood the reports correctly the three people who died were all in the same house and it was basically leveled to the ground. And considering some of the damage I’ve seen around Clarksville I’m surprised there weren’t more deaths. There is at least one strip mall that was literally flattened and this was the middle of the afternoon shopping on Saturday.
Tornado Dixie Alley is a very real thing.
I thot the last train to Clarksville left the station in 1966…
Happy to learn that BevWKy is safe and Geoff the aardvark’s Granddaughters are OK and receiving a trampoline for Christmas ! Thank you SNS for the always informative posting that you do and prayers for our IOTW “family” . Am adding my prayers here ’cause this is a very homey bunch & you all are good neighbors.
Not sure if this is NWS official info but here’s a Nashville meteorologist talking about the tornado track.
https://youtu.be/cq4HqnLNj4w?si=-Z0qcCzMUauoB5V9
One of the news shows had a tower cam of a HUGE flash that they said was a tornado getting a power substation.
Good luck getting parts for that.
They sent all THAT kind of stuff to Ukraine to replace theirs every time the Russians blow them up.
Here is the best damage summary I’ve seen so far:
https://hoptownchronicle.org/recovery-work-begins-in-clarksville-and-todd-county-areas-hit-by-destructive-tornado/
It’s from a local blog from my hometown, Hopkinsville AKA Hoptown by locals. I think she is a former feature writer from the local newspaperml. She’s doing a great job building a public interest information site even it it does tend to lean a tad left. What doesn’t nowadays?
Regarding the power station explosions, I’ve seen several videos showing what looks like a bomb going off. Honestly can’t tell if they are different locations or different angles of the same event. But it’s huge.
We just got hit by a tornado here in Knoxville in August. Smaller by comparison, property damage only (State Farm is actually paying for everything, about 40k for us in all) injuries were from cleanup efforts afterwards. We had residual from this storm and it scared the hell out of me because we aren’t done cleaning up by half. There is a nearby family whose house was partially flattened by the August tornado, all the tarps covering the rebuilding got ripped away by this second storm and all the recent work got trashed.