Severe storms that tore through central Tennessee on Saturday killed six people and sent nearly two dozen to the hospital as homes and businesses were damaged in multiple cities.
Three people, including a child, were killed after an apparent tornado struck Montgomery County north of Nashville near the Kentucky state line, county officials said in a news release.
The Nashville Emergency Operation Center said on social media that three people were killed by severe storms in a neighborhood just north of downtown Nashville.
Photo: AP
Another 23 people were treated for injuries at hospitals in Montgomery County.
Photographs posted by Clarksville Fire Rescue on social media showed damaged houses with debris strewn in the lawns, a tractor trailer flipped on its side on a highway and insulation ripped out of building walls.
“This is devastating news and our hearts are broken for the families of those who lost loved ones,” Clarksville Mayor Joe Pitts said in a statement. “The city stands ready to help them in their time of grief.”
The Metropolitan Nashville Police Department identified the victims killed north of downtown as Joseph Dalton, 37; Floridema Gabriel Perez, 31, and her son, Anthony Elmer Mendez, 2.
Dalton was inside his mobile home when the storm tossed it on top of Perez’s residence. Two other children, one in each home, were taken to a hospital with non-life threatening injuries, the department said in a statement.
No further information about the other three deaths was immediately available.
The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement that a tornado touched down at about 2pm. A shelter was set up at a local high school.
Residents were asked to stay at home while first responders evaluated the situation.
Shanika Washington said that as soon as she heard the storm sirens going off in her Clarksville neighborhood, she took her children, ages five and 10, to a windowless bathroom in the basement of her townhouse.
“The lights were flickering, so I knew it was somewhere close in the vicinity,” she said. “I just kept praying to God as it was going on. It was very terrifying and scary.”
During their 20 harrowing minutes in the bathroom, Washington hovered over her children as a protective shield.
“The back door absolutely did fly open, and you just heard a bunch of wind,” she said. “The blinds and stuff were like shaking really bad. I could tell that we were dead smack in the middle of a storm.”
When she came out of the bathroom, she looked out of a window and saw the destruction: Debris swept onto cars that had their windows broken out. Shutters ripped from homes. Some roofs were ripped off townhouses. Air conditioning units and backyard grills were tossed like toys, and wooden dividers between townhouses were missing.
More than 80,000 electricity customers were without power in Tennessee on Saturday night, PowerOutage.us said.
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