Tornadoes Rip Through Middle Tennessee, Leaving Six Dead

This story is a partnership between the Nashville Banner and the Nashville Scene. For more information, visit NashvilleBanner.com.

If you’ve ever been in an earthquake, the sound is not necessarily deafening. It is simply everywhere all at once. The noise is low and overpowering, and then — if the quake is terrible enough — it is accented by the world breaking all around you.

“It sounds vague, like a big sound,” says Natalie Qayed, a Northern California native who moved to Nashville 10 years ago and has experienced a few earthquakes. The tornado that ripped through her Cumberland Bend neighborhood in Madison on Saturday had that same terrifying noise.

Qayed heard the roar growing louder from their downstairs bathroom, where she and her husband Andrew took shelter.

“Then I heard the ripping, and I said to my husband, ‘What is that sound?’” she says. “Now we know it was the roof in the back getting ripped off. But it sounded like twisting metal. It was so fast. We had just enough time to be like, 'Oh my gosh, we're getting hit.' And then it was just silent. It was gone. It was the weirdest, and it sounded like being inside the fuselage of an airplane.”

The tornado spent maybe 15 seconds over them from beginning to end, Qayed estimates. When the couple stepped outside to survey the damage, strips of siding had been sheared from the house, and the back portion of their roof had been torn off and slammed down on the patio. The houses on their street were marked by the randomness of tornado damage: One was caved-in on top while the home next door was only missing an HVAC unit; backyard sheds were catapulted into neighboring lots; whole sections of fences were simply missing; most homes were missing roof shingles, but the number varied from as few as three to hundreds.

The National Weather Service estimates that more than a dozen tornadoes touched down in Middle Tennessee on Dec. 9, killing three in Montgomery County and three in Davidson County and causing widespread damage. The Clarksville tornado, which moved north into Kentucky, was preliminarily rated an EF3 tornado with winds of at least 150 mph. After an assessment with Nashville Fire Department personnel, the National Weather Service rated the Madison tornado as an EF2 with winds of 125 mph. Saturday's destruction arrives less than four years after another cluster of deadly tornadoes devastated Middle Tennessee — including one that ripped through parts of downtown, North Nashville and East Nashville in March 2020.

At a Sunday morning press conference, Mayor Freddie O’Connell praised the work of first responders and pointed both storm victims and volunteers looking to donate or help to NashvilleResponds.com, a coordinated effort by nonprofit organizations called Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster, including the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee, the United Way of Middle Tennessee and the Red Cross. 

Victims displaced by the storm were housed over the weekend at Isaac Litton Middle School in Inglewood. NFD Chief William Swann said 22 structures were destroyed entirely, in addition to numerous others that were standing but unsafe to live in.

“Please be aware that there [is] still a significant risk of debris in unstable structure areas,” Swann said. “It is critical that you exercise extreme caution when you navigate through affected areas, and avoid entering any buildings or structures that appear to be damaged or unstable.”

As of Sunday afternoon, the Nashville Electric Service estimated that 26,000 people were still without power. NES CEO Teresa Broyles-Aplin said that for some areas, due to damaged substations, the wait for power restoration could be “days instead of hours.” She said a viral video, which showed the tornado striking something and causing an explosion, might have been an NES substation.  

O’Connell said Metro’s resources were being deployed quickly. 

“Nashville is a place where, when we face adversity in the community, it always steps up,” O’Connell said. “And we have seen that the amount of personal outreach that I've had from individual residents, from corporations, from nonprofits, from people at the state and federal level has just been astonishing. I want everyone that has been impacted by the storm to know that we are here for you. The mayor's office and the entire Metro government are here to work with you. While the days and weeks ahead will be challenging, we will respond. We will be with you.”

Less than two miles east of Cumberland Bend, some were not as fortunate as Qayed and her neighbors. 

As the tornado reached 200 Nesbitt Drive, it struck a small mobile home park. According to authorities, the trailer of 37-year-old Joseph Dalton and his 10-year-old son was picked up and smashed onto another trailer; 31-year-old Floridema Gabriel Perez and her two sons — ages 7 and 2 — were in the second trailer.

Dalton was killed, along with Perez, who was holding her 2-year-old when they both died. The other two boys survived the event and were transported to Vanderbilt with non-life-threatening injuries. 

The fatalities illustrate the horrible strength of the storm. Between the trailers and the concrete pads where they sat is a large tree. According to one bystander, the tree is relatively undamaged, meaning Dalton’s trailer was flipped 30 to 40 feet into the air over the tree before landing upside-down on top of Perez’s home. 

What was once six mobile homes in a row is now four smashed metal boxes and a field of debris. 

Yards are torn up on Nesbitt Lane, with trees and utility poles snapped in half. The damage to the houses appears minimal until the intersection of Nesbitt Lane and Heritage Glen Drive. The tornado tore through that part of Madison.

Starting at that corner, the houses have massive holes torn through them. One has an entire upper corner blown out, exposing what appears to be a second-story bedroom. Nearly every house on the street has roof damage; many have at least one wall of the house blown out. 

Late on Sunday afternoon, Gov. Bill Lee came to observe the damage. He had begun the day in Clarksville and worked his way east to Nashville.

“It’s heartbreaking,” Lee said at a twilight press conference on Nesbitt. “On the other hand, everywhere we went, we saw volunteers, we saw people from churches and nonprofits. And we saw Tennesseans that were coming into the neighborhoods that they didn't live in to make sure they were doing all they could to help. We also, of course, have begun the whole process of an emergency declaration, pursuing federal government disaster declaration. That process has already begun today. Most importantly, we need to remember the victims.”

Lee’s motorcade was delayed for at least 15 minutes by a train. He and his wife Maria, along with other officials including state Sen. Charlane Oliver, state Rep. Vincent Dixie and U.S. Rep. John Rose, walked through most of the heavily damaged street. They spoke with several residents along the way and offered their support and prayers.

Homes weren’t the only structures affected. On Myatt Drive, an entire warehouse district was smashed. One strip mall has roof damage and most of its front windows blown out. GoFundMe campaigns for local businesses including Ebb & Iv, NB Goods and Apple & Oak have sprung up in the wake of the destruction.

“We will probably be open next Friday,” says Tommy Howard, owner of Completely Pristine, an events company that has been in Madison for seven years. “We need the money. We just went through COVID, we just went — you know, like, times are hard. We're living from paycheck to paycheck.”

“We had a guy in here at the time, and he said it sounded like they were dropping cars on the roof,” said Howard.