Longtime Scene Photographer on Covering the Tornadoes of 1998 and 2020

As dawn broke over East Nashville on March 3, residents of the Five Points, East End and Lockeland Springs neighborhoods roamed the streets. They surveyed the damage, checked in on their neighbors and grieved over the destruction from an EF-3 tornado that had ripped through the community not long after midnight. For many, the scene was eerily similar to that of an April afternoon in 1998, when a deadly tornado ravaged much of the same area. Longtime Scene photographer Eric England — who’s been an East Nashville resident since 1996 — was among the first on the ground after both devastating events, capturing the wreckage through the lens of his camera. It was wreckage that included his own house on Holly Street, as well as the homes of his neighbors and friends.

“It was hard because I feel my obligation to take some photos, and then I feel an obligation to stop and just take care of what needs to be done,” England says. “It’s bad. It was really emotional, especially the people you see [now] that were there [in 1998]. It’s just way worse, I feel like, at least for that neighborhood.”

In 1998, England was taking cover at home when the afternoon tornado struck his neighborhood. His Holly Street property suffered minimal damage then, but the surrounding area didn’t fare as well. Once the storm passed, he grabbed his camera and surveyed the area on foot.

“I walked down to what was then Radio Cafe, and Mac [Hill] had started giving away all the beer and the sandwiches because the power was out,” he says. “And everyone was starting to assess. And then I started walking to a friend’s house, and the whole roof was gone off of his house. He was hit pretty bad. And I just started walking around and taking photos like that.”

In 1998, England was shooting on film and had to process the images in his home before they could be published. “I had my darkroom in my house there on Holly Street, so I went out, shot a few rolls of film and then came back and processed them and made prints. And then by that afternoon I had prints that could then be scanned and turned into coverage.” The photographs ran in the April 23, 1998, issue of the Scene, seven days after the storm hit. 

After last week’s tornado, England was once again capturing the destruction from the same vantage point on Holly Street, where his home — now a rental property — had its windows blown out. A tree also crashed through the garage. This time around, his photos were published on the Scene’s website and social media accounts within a few hours, and were ultimately viewed online by tens of thousands of people before day’s end.

“This time, it’s just instantaneous,” he says. “The one thing that is really, really different, I guess, is that when I was going through Five Points especially … everybody had their phone out, talking into their phone, taking a video, taking a picture. Even the pictures that I took and that came out in the Scene’s slideshow that got lots of views, everybody and their brother had coverage just as good or better immediately because they were in a different spot. Still photography is really dependent on the moment, and so it’s what you get when you get there.”

One of the moments that England captured that has reverberated through the community — one that was the most challenging and emotional for him personally — was a series of shots of firefighters lowering the flag at the historic Holly Street Fire Hall, which was built in 1914. “The guys at the fire station taking down the flag — the flag pole was bent,” he says while fighting back tears. “The station on Holly Street, I believe, is the oldest one in town. Our Scout troops go there, everybody goes there. I had a friend 20 years ago [who] took their kids there when he shoved a Lego up his nose. Those guys, they were taking the flag down, folding the flag. In the midst of all this, they’re still doing those things. ... It’s kinda nice to see them do it.”

The images that England captured of East Nashville and later of Donelson — along with Scene photographer Daniel Meigs’ coverage of the destruction in North Nashville and Germantown — gave readers from Nashville and beyond immediate access to these storm-ravaged areas and showcased the breadth and severity of the damage. 

“I feel like I could do a better job somehow,” England says. “There [are] probably things that I missed just because it’s all so much. ... And so I feel like, wow, at a certain point, one shattered building looks like another shattered building. That sounds horrible, but I mean, it’s just so much. It’s really overwhelming.”