Rural Tennessee Assesses Tornado Damage

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RENEE MONTAGNE, host:

This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.

The tornadoes came fast and furious on Tuesday. On Wednesday they hit before dawn, when people were sleeping. In five Southern states, at least 55 people were killed and hundreds injured. The rural areas outside Nashville, Tennessee, were the hardest hit, as NPR's Kathy Lohr reports.

KATHY LOHR: Northeast of Nashville near the Kentucky border, the homes and trailers that sat near the golf course in tiny Lafayette, Tennessee, are now in pieces. Trees were sheared off and some were literally ripped out of the ground, roots and all. Cars were flipped over. At least 31 people died in Tennessee, many here in Macon County.

Ms. ELIZABETH BOYCHECK(ph) (Resident, Lafayette, Tennessee): As far as I know past our houses, the golf course and that, everything's destroyed and gone. The whole neighborhood's gone.

LOHR: At the Red Cross shelter set up inside the National Guard Armory in Lafayette, Elizabeth Boycheck is wrapped in a red blanket. You can see the distress in her tired eyes as she talks with some of her neighbors about losing their homes and trying to check on families they have not heard from yet.

Ms. BOYCHECK: We're exhausted. None of us have gotten any sleep at all. We're in shock.

LOHR: In one of the back rooms, a doctor and some assistants care for those who have come in with minor injuries.

Dr. JAMES COLE(ph) (Physician, Lafayette, Tennessee): Pull a little piece of wood out of his eyebrow there.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: It's right here.

Dr. COLE: Yeah, we can irrigate it with some peroxide.

LOHR: Dr. James Cole(ph) works on James Krouger(ph), who was inside his home when the tornado hit. Krouger says he hit the floor and everything began swirling around him. As a result he has a couple of cracked ribs, one black eye, scratches all over his face and back, and a cut on his forehead. The doctor is cleaning the area where he just removed a small piece of wood.

Dr. COLE: Okay. Here we go. Just don't move.

Mr. JAMES KROUGER (Patient of Dr. Cole's): It's just a trip. I don't even know what it is. It's, like, it was sliding and everything was just on me. That's all I remember. And then everything, like, was sucked forward for about three feet and then risen up. And what I just went through, I don't understand that I'm still here. I know God didn't want me to leave.

LOHR: It's hard for people here to believe that three tornadoes swept through Macon County. There were reports of dozens of tornadoes that touched down across the South. At least 13 people were killed in Arkansas, seven in Kentucky, and four more in Alabama.

Officials in Tennessee spent much of the day searching for victims, going door-to-door across downed power lines, rummaging through piles of debris. Krouger says his closest neighbor, an elderly woman, didn't make it.

Mr. KROUGER: My neighbor's house was gone and I knew she was, Jesus took her. I knew that. Prayed for her but they found her body in the trailer.

LOHR: People here said they knew severe storms were possible, but they came on so fast and covered such an extensive area. Some did get to shelters, others hid in their bathrooms and hallways. Now they have no homes to go back to. Elizabeth Boycheck says her husband took a few photos of their neighborhood and brought them back to her. She couldn't even look at them.

Ms. BOYCHECK: Me and my son, we're going to North Carolina Friday with my sister-in-law because we can't stand it. We got to get out of here for a little while. It's just that bad.

LOHR: There's a sense of relief that the storms have passed, but the pain lingers as people realize they will have to face the destruction and figure out how to start over.

Kathy Lohr, NPR News, Hendersonville, Tennessee.

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