Stan White looked at an overturned sport utility

***
Stan White looked at an overturned sport utility vehicle, a large red X
slashed through the white paint. He closed his eyes. White, a longtime
resident on Cherokee Valley Road, points to the paint and whispered, “That’s
Chelsea’s car.” Just an hour before on Thursday, the bodies of White’s first
cousin, Chris Black, and his daughter, Chelsea, were found near their house. But
Black’s wife, Pamela; son, Cody; and baby daughter, nicknamed “BB,” couldn’t
be found. “[They] could be anywhere,” White said, his eyes heavy. The
devastation on Cherokee Valley Road stretched for several miles. It got the brunt
of the tornadoes that ripped through Catoosa County, authorities said. The
storms leveled dozens of houses and killed at least eight in the neighborhood.
Neighbors said at least 15 people were still missing Thursday, but authorities
couldn’t confirm reports of missing people. From a first glance when turning off
U.S. Highway 41, the road appears untouched. But about a mile down, the trees
start to look mangled. Come around a bend and the devastation explodes in front
of you. Trees along the hills sprout like spikes, blades of wood shorn by a cosmic
lawnmower. Foundations of houses lay barren. Sofa cushions, house insulation
and shoes lay scattered along ditches and in ponds. On Thursday, dogs sniffed
through the rubble, trying to locate the missing — dead or alive.
***
Aipan Gajjar watched the news from the third story of his father’s hotel,
the Baymont Inn & Suites right off Interstate 75, when the wind begain to
roar outside. Going to the window, Gajjar saw a funnel cloud swirling directly
toward him. Grabbing his aunt, Pushpa Champaneria, he dove into the bathroom
next to the window and crouched inside with three other family members. They
huddle in the bathroom as the side of the room and the entire roof are wrenched
off the building. “We just started praying,” Champaneria said. On Thursday
morning, drywall, food and clothes were flung on the floor of the wrecked room.
The kitchenette’s countertop was still intact, and two tortillas still sat neatly in the
toaster oven from the family’s interrupted meal the night before. Gajjar’s father,
Ravi, stood at what’s left of the hotel’s front entrance, saying nothing. Every
window of the entrance was shattered. Most of the building’s backside was torn
off, and furniture sat in the obliterated rooms. Ravi and his family came back to
salvage any belongings left inside. But they couldn’t. “Everything’s gone,” he
said, tears welling up in his eyes.
— By staff writer Joy Lukachick
***
Most of those injured in Ringgold were people who happened to stop at
the Interstate 75 exit to grab a bite to eat, stay the night or ride out storms.
On Thursday morning, cars were scattered around the area, suggesting that
drivers abandoned them in a hurry. One minivan ssat at a gas pump near the
interchange, the station collapsed around it. A sack full of Krystals rested in the
passenger seat of a badly beaten Jeep Cherokee that was tossed like — well, a
bag of Krystals — onto a sidewalk. Many of the former fast-food restaurants, gas
stations and hotels were unrecognizable, and county officials had to identify the
splintered heaps to the media. During the tornado, four people were trapped in a
bathroom at the BP station in Ringgold as the building tore to pieces around
them, according to Catoosa County Sheriff Phil Summers.
— By staff writer Andy Johns
It was close to 8:30 p.m. and Willie and Marvin Quinn had just returned
from church. They sat down to read Bible verses to each another, as they do
every night, when Willie got the phone call from her son, Ralph. Ralph, his wife
and two teenage sons had been driving from Bradley County to Apison Pike
when hail, thunderous winds and a fusillade of lightning forced them to take
cover at a hospital in Cleveland, Tenn. “Momma, are y’all all right?” Ralph asked
nervously. “Yeah. We’re fine,” the 75-year-old said, comforting him. She didn’t
realize a tornado, carving a deadly path, was about to land on top of her. Lights
inside the small, white house flickered on and off. A massive lightning bolt struck
outside the window. A sound like a freight train echoed in the distance. “Come,
get in the hallway. Let’s pray,” Willie yelled to her husband. “The tornado is here.”
On their knees, she kept one hand over her husband’s head. Debris battered her
back as the side of their house, the one she helped build in five weeks in 1969,
the one she raised her children in, collapsed and shed its roof. “Lord, we are in
your hands,” she prayed until it passed. “We are in your hands. Take care of us.”
Across the road, her neighbor, Paul Dennington, was pinned — conscious —
under a tree. He is partially deaf and had walked out on the porch of his
doublewide trailer, unaware of the storm, when the funnel cloud came down on
him. In two seconds, he said, the trailer was ripped out from under him and
shredded into shrapnel. Willie’s other neighbors, Tracy and Howard Foster, hid in
a hallway of their trailer, which was all that stood the next day. After the storm
had passed, they screamed for Tracy’s father, Lamar Foster, who lived in a trailer
next door. They found him behind a 20-foot-high pile of jumbled cars, shards of
metal and glass, broken wood, mattresses and clothes. He was alive, but one leg
was fractured and blood dripped from his face. None of them has insurance and
they have nowhere to go. Their pets are missing. Their homes are gone. Their
memories are blown over the miles around them. But they all count themselves
lucky.
— By staff writer Joan Garrett
***
Tammy Garrett pointed across the green fields along McGee Road in
Apison, gesturing toward giant, mangled piles of Sheetrock, siding and
furniture. “That was a gorgeous house,” she said. “And that one over there, oh,
they always kept that house so beautiful.” Now they’re just the guts of homes. On
Thursday, residents were just starting to wade through the rubble, slowly sifting
for belongings, perching on walls without ceilings to get a clearer view. On
nearby Clonts Road, where four people were found dead, tattered remnants of
the neighborhood were splayed across the green hills. Shredded houses. Cars
flung upsidedown onto what had been kitchen floors. Cellphone towers bent in
half. Garrett helped her brother clear the damage at his rental property, where
the roof was torn off the barn and all the fences snapped.
— By staff writer Kate Harrison
***
At Apison Elementary, as about 250 volunteers showed up Thursday to
help their neighbors dig out from the tornadoes, Lt. Robert Starnes of the
Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office gathered them to tell them what to expect.
“You’re liable to see some things you’ve never seen before,” Starnes warned.
“There is the possibility that there are going to be some dead bodies. I’m trying to
prepare you.” But there was no way to prepare any of the workers for the sights
that met them as they turned down roads like McGee Road and Clonts Road,
only to find razed neighborhoods and whole groves of splintered trees. Workers
combed through the area, knocking on the door of every home, asking residents
if everyone was accounted for. At Ronald Sedman’s wrecked home on McGee,
crews found everyone OK, but at least five cows and two calves on Sedman’s
property had vanished. Sedman, 80, is still trying to digest the scene before him.
“There’s never, ever been anything like this,” he said. “There’s stuff scattered all
through my property; I don’t know whose it is.”
— By staff writer Kate Harrison
Wednesday’s storms blew away lives and houses — and some personal
records. Geologist Terry Davis lives on a ridge near downtown Knoxville. He
trudged outside his home Thursday morning and found a document in his
driveway. It was a mammogram from a clinic about 110 miles away, Chattanooga
Imaging. “I should let this lady know that personal information ... is scattered from
there to Knoxville — and maybe further? — but I doubt they have phone, email or
even power now,” Davis emailed. Hixson homeowner Clay Bolling, 77, had a
similar find. As he sorted through insulation, roofing and other debris, Bolling
spotted a bank deposit slip from Huntsville, Ala., and a black cowboy hat. The
deposit had a person’s name on it. “I couldn’t believe it,” he said.
— By staff writer Chris Carroll
***
A tree as large as a building lay against Sharkethia Porter’s back porch
railing. If it splits completely and breaks the rail, the tree will come through
the back bedroom of her Dorris Street home, she said. “The insurance adjusters
say they’re coming. The city says they’re coming. The Electric Power Board says
they’re coming. Everybody says they’re coming. They just don’t know when
they’re going to get here,” Porter said. “The good thing is we have no place else
to go, so we’ll be here, too.” The tree is one of three that fell toward Porter’s
threebedroom home during Wednesday’s storms. A tree near the front of her
house fell on her car. “All of this came unglued around 9 a.m.,” she said. “By
10:30, it was a wrap.”
— By staff writer Yolanda Putman
Jacob Taylor hadn’t eaten or slept since the tornado demolished everything
but his phone, his wallet and the clothes he was wearing. “I’m still in shock,
running on adrenaline,” he said Thursday. “I didn’t expect it to do the amount of
damage it did.” When the tornado hit, Taylor, 23, and roommate Andy Page were
in a second-floor apartment in Village Green Apartments, one of the hardest-hit
areas in Trenton. The two squeezed into the closet holding the water heater as
the storm blew through. “All you could hear was the roar — you couldn’t even
hear the walls being blown away,” he said. “It was over in 5 seconds. All that was
left was the carpet on the floor.” All that remained of the 25 brick units was piles
of splintered board, scattered brick, bits of insulation plastered everywhere and a
few walls — like an explosion had torn them to smithereens. The tornado’s 150mph winds tossed cars into heaps and blew out their windows like a dandelion.
Everything Taylor and Page had was gone, even their cats. On Thursday, the
two, their family and friends searched frantically for the cats and several litters of
kittens amidst the rubble. After hours of searching, Page heard a meow that led
him to Ellie, his pet of three years. She had been hiding near the mangled
bathtub. Tears ran down his face as Page cuddled her carefully. “We are lucky —
we both have jobs and no one was hurt,” said Taylor, who has joined the Marines
and is waiting to be called for duty. “But you don’t know where to start picking up
the pieces.”
***
“We are all gonna die!” Ten-year-old Courtney Williams and her siblings
were screaming that as their mother herded them into the bathroom. “Our
mom was telling us not to panic,” Courtney said. “But then we heard the storm
hit, and that’s when she told us, ‘We can panic now.’” Courtney gave a play-byplay account of how her family of five survived the tornado as her parents and
friends carried out any items they could find and stored then in a van. “I’m
surprised we survived, seriously,” Courtney said. “The roof just blew off.”
***
When 20-year-old Dustin Tinker saw the hallway wall warp from the
pressure of the wind, he knew this was the real deal. “I dove into the
bathroom,” Tinker said. “It seemed like forever.” Tinker and his mother, Paula
Tinker, were home in their apartment in the Village Green complex when the
tornado hit. About 34 people lived in the 25 units in the apartment complex. By
Thursday afternoon, all had been accounted for, most with only minor injuries. A
few had broken bones. On Thursday morning, Paula Tinker stacked up
encyclopedias and other books, balancing them on a wall that lay on the ground
next to what had been her home. “I’m devastated — I have nowhere to go,” she
said, fighting back tears.
***
There was too much daylight in the house when Cecelia Dawson cracked
open the closet door in the middle of the storm. “I knew something was
wrong then,” Dawson said. “I just shut the door again and closed my eyes.”
When Dawson ventured back outside with her mother and her two children a few
minutes later, she could see her neighbor’s demolished house. “There were no
walls left,” she said. Dawson said she watched the storm move down the side of
Sand Mountain from her vantage point at the doorway. When she saw the funnel,
she knew she had moments to make it to the closet. Just a few houses away, a
mobile home was tossed into the street, killing the man inside. Dawson and her
mother, Becky Edwards, tried to salvage a few belongings Thursday morning.
Edwards lived in the small frame house for 34 of her 67 years. She clutched a
single muddy flip-flop as she looked at the tattered evergreen bushes
surrounding what had been her front porch. “I’m just devastated,” she said, as
her voice choked and then broke. “But I’m thankful we are all alive. The good
Lord was with me; if it hadn’t been for him, we wouldn’t be here.”
***
Donny Walston was the kind of guy who made everyone laugh with his
raucous sense of humor. Walston died Wednesday evening when a
tornado tore his mobile home off its foundation and sent it crashing across the
yard, according to family members. His girlfriend was taken to Erlanger hospital
with injuries. “We are all in shock,” said Jolene Harrison, Walston’s niece, crying
as she moved bits of wood and debris, searching through endless amounts of
rubble. “We are trying to find some of his personal stuff,” niece Kristy Walston
added. “Nothing like this has happened before.”
— By staff writer Mariann Martin
Larry and Lisa Walters found the baby and her mother in the rubble of their
storage building. “We dug the baby out,” Larry Walters said. The child was
taken to T.C. Thompson Children’s Hospital in Chattanooga, but later died. The
woman “had a faint pulse — she didn’t make it,” he said. The tornado that
slammed through their neighborhood on Blue Springs Road apparently grabbed
a nearby mobile home with the mother and child inside and slammed it into the
Walters’ storage building. The woman and child are among the nine fatalities in
Bradley County after a total of six tornadoes ripped through the area. There are
no reports of missing people, according to authorities. Many of the fatalities took
place on or near Blue Springs Road, but authorities did not release the names of
the dead. But there are some details. One woman was crushed by a tree at 200
Gentry Lane. A 67-year-old woman went into cardiac arrest and died after she
lost power on her oxygen machine at 995 11th St. NE. A 78-year-old in a vehicle
was killed on Old Alabama Road.
— By staff writers Randall Higgins and Beth Burger
***
Kathy Earls grabbed empty boxes — some damp from rainwater — and began
packing them with cleaning products, including counter sprays and bleach.
“We’re trying to salvage what we can like everyone else,” she said. “We don’t
know what we’re going to do. I don’t have a clue what we’re going to do.” The
family-owned business, A-1 Closeouts at 2256 Spring Place Road, sits in a strip
mall, or what used to be one. The storms shredded the end of the building where
A-1 Closeouts has operated for the past year. Standing inside the store, overcast
skies could be seen through a ceiling hole draped and decorated with insulation,
ceiling tiles and warped metal. Her landlord told her it would take four to five
months to reconstruct the business, she said. “It is a shock. Nothing you can do.
You just have to pick up, salvage what you can, day to day,” she said. Family
members, including Earls’ mother, aunt and friends, pitched in with the cleanup
efforts. Earl closed early on Wednesday as the storms approached. “In some
respects, we’re lucky,” she said. “We were all closed last night when it
happened.” Next door, Mark Howard hauled martial arts tools, trophies and other
items from his flattened karate studio, Academy of Shotokan Karate. He began
cleaning up late Wednesday night after the storms passed through. His business
is not insured, so he worked to save the items inside. “We’ve been here all night,”
he said, standing near the collapsed structure. “We’ll find a place to store this
and search for a place to train. We don’t know how to quit.”
— By staff writer Beth Burger
NEW HARMONY, TENN
Linda R. Smith crouched in the
hallway of her New Harmony Road
home in Bledsoe County. The lights
flickered just before the power went out.
Then it hit. A rumbling roar announced
the storm’s arrival, and the air filled with
debris and the sound of rending wood
and wind. “Everything happened so fast,”
Smith, 66, said Thursday morning as she
tried to clear away debris to find her
belongings. At the height of the storm,
the winds wrapped tin roofing material
around the trees surrounding Smith’s
house like foil gum wrappers. Wooden
boards blasted from buildings on a
nearby farm stabbed into the ground and
through the back wall of her house. “I was just praying, ‘Please stop. Please
stop,’” Smith said. “It was unreal,” But she feels pretty lucky. “I’m still alive and
these people down through here, I mean there was five that went to the hospital
— and a 6-month-old baby — and Phillip Wooden was found down in the woods
and his whole home was torn apart,” Smith said. Wooden and his son, Riley,
were OK, she said.
As the third wave of Wednesday’s deadly supercell thunderstorms bore
down on Sequatchie Valley, Vonnie Jackson, her son and 15-year-old
daughter left their New Harmony mobile home for her mother’s house. When she
returned Thursday, she found devastation instead of her home. “I was thankful I
wasn’t home,” said the 46-year-old Jackson. Now, the only thing she can do is
“start over.” “I have my mother to live with, so the three of us will stay with her,”
she said. Her son, 11-year-old Anthony Sullivan, was silent as he reflected on
what he thought when he first saw his home Thursday morning. His face was
grim and his eyes shiny with unspoken emotion. “I don’t know what to think,”
Anthony said, finally. His piano was fine Wednesday when he last saw it, but on
Thursday, “we found it but it doesn’t play,” he said.
— By Staff Writer Ben Benton
BRIDGEPORT, ALA.
As a funnel cloud dropped
from the sky and began tearing through the Southern Oaks subdivision in this
small town, Pat Johnson rushed to a closet in her house.
Her daughter, Samantha Phillips, had just run into the house after leaving work
early. With Phillips’ 9-month-old daughter Kloi pressed between them, the three
huddled in the small closet as the tornado tore through their backyard.
Johnson’s husband, Benny, was in another part of the house.
“We had our arms around each other, and we were holding that baby as tight as
we could between us,” Johnson said. “I just started praying as loud as I could,
‘Jesus, don’t let this baby get sucked out of our arms!’”
At least 20 houses in Southern Oaks sustained damage from the tornado. Eight
of those, clustered in an area covering about a half-mile radius, were shredded to
the foundations. A 13-year-old boy who lived in the subdivision died in the storm.
“We literally felt the walls shake. The whole house moved,” Johnson said. “It was
a noise that I can’t really explain, but mostly you just felt pressure in your ears
that hurt so bad you felt like your head would explode.
“You didn’t hear glass breaking or trees falling or anything. It was just a roar.
And then it got eerily quiet, and you could hear people screaming outside.”
The tornado touched down in the Johnsons’ yard at 5:17 p.m. CDT. Four
minutes later, Phillips began texting her husband at work to see if he was safe.
Standing on the hillside where her home had been reduced to three walls and a
yard of twisted metal and downed trees, Phillips looked over a field littered by
debris, including an 18-wheel tractor-trailer that had been picked up and dropped
into a ditch about 300 yards from where it was parked.
“There were houses all through there until last night,” Phillips said. “Now there’s
nothing left. Two houses across the street from us are nothing but rubble, and
there’s not much left for us to save from our house, either.
“It’s sad, but we can replace our stuff. I’m just glad we’re all still together.”
— By Staff Writer
Stephen Hargis
IDER, ALA.
Lynn Woods admitted to being ill-prepared for the tornado that destroyed
her home Wednesday. The 43-year-old court reporter for Hamilton County
Judge Don Poole said she stayed home from work on Wednesday because of
threatening weather. Her sons Andrew, 16, Alex, 13, and Alex’s friend,
Johnathan Tipton, 13, also stayed home. When hail and wind started, the family
ran for the hall, she said. Then Andrew looked out the window and yelled, “Mom,
I see it. It’s on the road.” “I saw the roof being ripped off as I pinned the two
younger boys on the floor,” said Woods. “Andrew was halfway down on the floor
when the tornado picked him up and slammed him down. When I opened my
eyes, everything around me was gone.” Andrew suffered a concussion but no
one else was hurt, she said. Her 2,000-square-foot brick home is leveled, as are
the other five houses in the neighborhood. On Thursday, someone finally found
her car — in a pond. “I lost everything I own and I don’t really care,” she said.
“We’re very lucky. By the grace of God, we’re still here.”
— By Staff Writer Karen Nazor Hill
DUNLAP, TENN.
It was only a couple of months ago when Mayor
Dwain Land received a Facebook post asking what
happened to the town siren that alerted people when
something bad was going to happen.
Land said he went to the fire department to investigate
whether the siren still worked and discovered bird nests in
them. After cleaning out the nests, the siren still worked.
On Wednesday, the siren rang out throughout the day,
warning people of the waves of storms about to hit town.
Major damage included smashed stop lights at intersections on Highway 127,
Rankin Avenue and Main Street. Signs and roofs were blown off, and downed
trees and power lines were strewn about.
Dunlap had one fatality. A man drowned trying to cross a flooded creek, Land
said.
“It’s just the worst thing I’ve seen in Dunlap in my 51 years,” Land said. “I was
just saddened. I was so scared every time we pulled up to a place to see if they
needed help that someone was going to be dead or injured really bad. We were
fortunate; I can’t imagine some of these other towns.”
— Correspondent
Corrina Sisk-Casson
HOW TO HELP
The American Red Cross of the Chattanooga Greater Area needs donations to
provide shelter, food, emotional support and other disaster assistance to victims
affected by these storms.
To make a donation, people can visit www. chattanoogaredcross. org or mail
your check to: The Greater Chattanooga Area Chapter American Red Cross: 801
McCallie Avenue, Chattanooga, TN 37403
The Catoosa County Sheriff’s Office is accepting bottled water for storm victims
in Ringgold. Authorities asked people to drop water by the office at 5842
Highway 41 so that it can be distributed.
Oakwood Baptist Church in Walker County is collecting bottled water,
nonperishable food and toiletries for storm victims in Flintstone and Ringgold.
Church members are setting up a distribution center at their Gateway campus for
Ringgold and another at Ministry of Hope for Flintstone. They need volunteers to
receive donations from 6-9 p.m. today at Oakwood’s Gateway Campus and 8
a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday at the Gateway Campus and Ministry of Hope building. To
sign up or get more information, visit www. oakwoodbc.org.
First Baptist Church in LaFayette, Ga., is collecting nonperishable food and
bottled water for victims. Items can be dropped off at the church office during
normal business hours or brought to church services on Sunday.
The American Red Cross of the Chattanooga Greater Area has developed the
Safe and Well website, enabling people within a disaster area to let friends and
relatives know of their well-being. People may list themselves as “Safe and Well”
and post messages that can be searched by phone or home address. Visit
www.redcross.org/ safeandwell (English) or www.sanoysalvo.org (Spanish).
A Volunteer and Resource Staging Area has been set up at the East Hamilton
Middle High School. Volunteers are accepting donations of food and water only
at this time.
In Bradley County, anyone who would like to volunteer with cleanup and
construction efforts can call the Bradley Baptist Association at 423-476-4953.
Blood Assurance is asking anyone able to get to a blood center or bloodmobile
to do so immediately. For more information, go to www. bloodassurance.org or
call 423-756-0966.
HOW TO GET HELP
For help from the state of Georgia, call 404-656-1776.
SAFETY TIPS
Be aware of hazards from exposed nails and broken glass.
Do not touch downed power lines or objects in contact with downed lines.
Report electrical hazards to the police and the utility company.
If it is dark when you are inspecting your home, use a flashlight rather than a
candle or torch to avoid the risk of fire or explosion in a damaged home.
If you see frayed wiring or sparks, or if there is an odor of something burning,
you should immediately shut off the electrical system at the main circuit breaker if
you have not done so already.
If you smell gas or suspect a leak, turn off the main gas valve, open all
windows and leave the house immediately. Notify the gas company, the police or
fire departments, or state fire marshal’s office and do not turn on the lights, light
matches, smoke or do anything that could cause a spark. Do not return to your
house until you are told it is safe to do so.
Source: National Weather Service, Chattanooga Fire Department