A Mother’s Awesome Fury

It sounds kind of like a really bad made-for-TV movie, but I assure you, it’s entirely serious.  On this ultra-rare occasion, there’s no room for humor in me.  For you see, during the mid-afternoon hours of April 7, 2006….Mother Nature unleashed her power and fury all over Middle Tennessee…….hitting Gallatin (where I live) worst of all.

It didn’t take long to start after I woke up today (which was a about 12:20 pm….yeah, I took today off of work).  There were already some hefty storm lines moving into the western part of the midstate area.  And it was plain that the very worst part of it was heading directly at Gallatin.  As it passed Goodlettsville (which is where I work), reports were seemingly instantaneously coming in on how tornadoes were ripping through parts of Goodlettsville and were on the way towards Hendersonville and Gallatin.  I kept watching the news to see how bad it was going to get here.  After the power inexplicably went out (it hadn’t even started raining yet), I went and stood on the balcony in front of my apartment to survey things.  It was eerily calm…to a degree I’ve never felt before.  Someone yelled out, "TORNADO!  LOOK!"  And sure enough, there was a funnel cloud descending from the sky towards the extreme southern end of town (about 10-15 miles away from me, as I live on the extreme northern end of Gallatin).  Everyone ran back inside, just in case hunkering down was required.  Ten minutes later, I went back outside and noticed a few scattered hailstones on the ground.  Giant hailstones.  A little more than baseball sized.  Then my phone started to ring.  First it was Jenny (my sister).  She was freaking out because she had been talking to her dad (she lives in Ohio, by the way), when he said one was coming and his phone cut off…and she hadn’t been able to get ahold of him since.  Just as I was telling her I’d go over there and check it out, C.J. called in as well.  Same story:  he couldn’t get his dad to answer his phone (C.J. is in Murfreesboro now, by the way).  I told ’em both I’d go check it out and get back to ’em.

The first sign something was horribly wrong came when I reached the first traffic light on the way.  It was out….as were all the others in town.  Halfway there, I noticed there was not a single light on anywhere.  But still no sign of damage.  Not even a downed tree branch.  When I finally got over to Lock 4 Road, I started seeing signs of damage…which got progressively worse the closer I got to my mother’s house.  As I finally got a sightline past the row of trees that leads up to Nichols Lane (my mom’s street is a side street off of there), I saw the very little bit that remained of the house that once stood on the hill across the way.  A semi was blocking Nichols Lane, as the road was impassable due to trees and power lines being down.  I parked my car on the side of Lock 4 and jumped out into a dead sprint.  At this point, I was convinced my mother’s house was going to be gone.  Completely convinced.  From the flattened house on the hill, there are three more houses and a road before her house.  When I ran around the corner and saw the entirety of Nichols Lane……..I was in shock.  The only thing I can equate it to is a warzone.  The next two houses down from the house on the hill were destroyed.  Every single tree in every single yard of the four houses before Connie Drive (my mom’s street) was down or just cut in half.  Two power poles  were snapped off at their bases, dropping all the lines into the street (none active).  I hurdled a few downed trees, then had to slow to a walk to climb over larger downed trees, desperately trying to get to my mom’s house.  When I finally rounded the corner onto Connie Drive (there’s a tree line the blocks the view until you’re actually on the street itself), I saw her house still standing.  I ran to the house, ducking a downed cable line on the way, and burst through the front door.  "HELLO!?"  No answer.  No problem, because I was sure he was out wandering, seeing what was going on and where he could help.

I needed to call Jenny and C.J. back, but had forgotten my phone in my car.  I was on my way back for it when I ran into Randy at the intersection of Connie and Nichols.  He was shocked to see me and wondered how I’d gotten there and why I was there.  I told him, then continued back for my phone.  I immediately tried to call Jenny, but couldn’t get through.  Same with C.J.  No call would connect (thus proving that cell phones are actually worthless in a crisis….getting a call in or out was a son of a bitch the entire rest of the day).  I eventually got through to Jenny’s voicemail and told her all was well (enough) and to spread the word.  Randy told me how he saw the tornado drop from the sky not 300 yards away, and just knew it was coming right at the house.  "I thought I was gonna die.  I swear to you, I thought that was it," he said.  But just like three years ago, it veered off in another direction.  It threw shit all over the place in the yard and snapped the metal flag pole in their front yard right in half.  Someone’s pillow was in the back yard.  Someone’s electric toothbrush was in the front yard.  Across the street from Connie Drive, a subdivision was practically destroyed.  The houses closest to Nichols Lane (the other side of the street from where I was referring to earlier) was either leveled or had large chunks missing from them.  An entire row of huge pine trees was gone….a row that was about half a mile long.  Randy and I both kept getting voicemails coming in, but couldn’t check them.  I finally got a call through to Will’s parents (who live a few miles away from my mom), and it was only then that I started to realize just how bad things were all around town.

Will’s sister told me half of Vol State College was destroyed.  The two huge car lots across the street were destroyed.  A new subdivision back behind the car lots and shopping center next to them was utterly flattened…all of it.  Closer to her, there were houses in Woodvale (which is where Will’s parents live, and where my dad used to live until 2001) were leveled.  Someone found a piece of a school bus in their front yard.  The Golden Gallon gas station was destroyed.  Five people were killed in a building across the street from the Golden Gallon.  I saw pictures of all this later on the news, and, indeed, it was atrocious.  Cars at Vol State and from the car lots had been mangled together in huge lumps.  Some were overturned.  One instructor’s car flew from a Vol State parking lot, across Gallatin Road (which is a five lane road) and landed in one of the car lots.  The brand new Publix lost the back end of its building. 

I’ve honestly just never seen anything like it.  It rattled me quite a bit.  I’m still rattled now, in fact.  When I got a call through to my dad at around five o’clock, he sounded more relieved than I’ve ever heard him.  He’d been trying to get ahold of me for hours.  Wh

en I finally was able to check my messages later in the evening, I had two from him that I can only describe as "as concerned as a parent can get."  He sounded practically panicked.  My mom ended up stuck in traffic for a few hours trying to get home from work.  She drove past Vol State and all that mess on her way home and said she just broke down looking at it.

This never used to even be a worry in Gallatin, but "progress" is changing that.  Gallatin used to be located in a valley, so no tornadoes would ever drop through here.  They would always "jump" the city.  Now, though….the population is expanding rapidly, and has been for roughly a decade.  With that comes the need for new housing.  To make room for it, the hills that guarded the south side of Gallatin have been leveled out, thus leaving that half of the city wide open for something like this.  On Mother’s Day, 2003, a tornado took roughly the same path part of town, but it was much, much weaker.  The one that slammed through here today has been reported as an F-4.  Just about as bad as tornadoes get.  It’s going to take years to rebuild and recover………though I’m now convinced this is just going to keep happening over and over again.

And that, my friends, is the awe-inspiring power of Mother Nature’s Fury.

Sayonara.