Carshonda Harris, ETSU Multicultural Center director, and Adrianna Guram, ETSU associate director for Residence Life, woke up around 1 a.m. Tuesday morning to a siren going off in their hotel room and an intercom voice telling them to evacuate to the nearest stairwell.
The two ETSU faculty members were attending the American College Personnel Association conference in East Nashville when two tornadoes hit Middle Tennessee early Tuesday morning, causing widespread damage.
According to a preliminary damage survey by the National Weather Service, an EF-3 level tornado tore through several counties in Nashville, Mt. Juliet, Lebanon and surrounding areas, while a second, EF-4 level tornado tore through Putnam County in Cookeville. At least 25 people were killed, with 18 of those fatalities in Putnam County.
When Harris and Guram heard the sirens, they grabbed their stuff. They left their room on the fifth floor and headed to the stairwell with thousands of other people there for the conference. Harris said they only got down to about the third floor of the stairwell because it was packed from the ground floor up.
“So, we were sitting there, and you could hear the wind from outside,” Harris said. “And so, I had made the comment – ‘Is that wind?’ – because again, you really don’t hear anything from the stairwell. So, for the wind – for us to be able to hear the wind that strong – it had to be really, really strong winds.”
At that point they got on their phones, looked at the radar, and realized a tornado touched down. They stayed in the stairwell for about 30-45 minutes before they were cleared to return to their rooms, where they started watching the news and checking social media. They watched videos of the tornado. Their hotel – just a mile and a half away – was spared from its path.
Harris said it did not hit her until morning how “heartbreaking” the damage was as she saw images of downtown Nashville on the news.
“I started getting really emotional because we were very fortunate that we were safe, and we were safe really the whole time,” Harris said. “But to be that close and literally just right across the street, or right up the street –businesses and companies and homes were vanished, and so, it just really put things into perspective.”
They drove back on Wednesday. With Interstate 40 backed up with traffic from the storm damage, they took alternate routes to get back. These included streets that suffered damage from the tornado, which Harris said made them both emotional.
“It really is eye-opening to see it,” Harris said. “You see it on the news, but to go through a neighborhood – we went through a neighborhood – and just on the hill, you can see this house is still standing, but then there’s a big pile of wood right next door to this other house. Gas stations are gone; power lines are down. A McDonald’s sign is no more.”
The two women, however, were not the only ETSU faculty in Nashville this week. On the west side of Nashville – about 15-30 minutes before Harris and Guram woke up to their hotel room sirens – Dessi Foster, ETSU director of Development for Student Life and Enrollment and Roan Scholars, watched the lightning from her hotel room window as sirens went off outside.
Foster was in Nashville with the Roan Scholars Leadership Program, which included about 25 ETSU students. She said they were asleep in their hotel Monday night. Around 12:30 or 12:45 a.m. she got a call about the tornado from Jennifer Adler, assistant director of the Roan Scholars Leadership Program.
“Thank God we were not in the direct line, but it was a pretty scary night,” Foster said. “Sirens all night – outside you could hear them – but from where we were, it was pretty calm as far as the wind, and it was almost kind of eerie, how calm it was outside with the lightening and just very quiet.”
Foster described the scholars’ attitudes on Tuesday morning as “very somber.” They canceled all planned activities Tuesday and headed back home that day, but they had to take a longer route home because of road closures.
Foster said many students were up all night, watching the storm unfold. Student Government Association Vice President and Roan Scholar Tiffany Cook and her hotel roommates, however, were not among them.
Cook said she went to bed unaware of any storms, and she did not hear the sirens going off in the city. Around 6:30 a.m., she woke up to a buzzing phone with messages from her parents trying to make sure she was OK. She and the other girls in her room later checked the news and learned of the tornado’s damage.
“Waking up, I was just really confused and disoriented,” Cook said. “I was like, ‘What in the world is going on?’ So it was just surreal to wake up.”
Foster said she could not see the tornado from her hotel window, but she and the students realized the proximity of the damage the next morning when seeing places they had visited the days before. Specifically, the Geist restaurant, where they had eaten dinner Sunday night, suffered major damage.
“The restaurant that we ate at the night before – the entire front of it was ripped off,” Foster said. “And the farmers market where we had eaten that day had been turned in – you know we had lunch there that day, Monday – and then Monday evening it was turned into a shelter.”
Cook saw pictures of the destroyed Geist restaurant while searching Twitter Tuesday morning for news articles about the tornado.
“It didn’t really hit me that that was an area where I had been until I saw a picture of The Geist restaurant that we had been at,” Cook said. “And I was like ‘Oh my gosh, I was there like 36 hours ago. That’s absolutely crazy,’ but it was really surreal and humbling to realize that it was so close to us but yet, we were far enough away that we were safe, and there were so many people that weren’t that lucky.”
Along with the ETSU faculty and students visiting Nashville this week, Guram was concerned about ETSU students who live in or have families in Middle Tennessee. Guram spent time on Tuesday calling people and making sure they were accounted for because many ETSU students, current and alumni, from that area may have been affected. Because of this, Guram said ETSU students need to recognize events like these and offer support to areas in need.
“Whatever type of Buccaneer community we can have to support each other is just really important,” Guram said. “Because sometimes you may not have personally been affected, but that doesn’t mean that other people you know aren’t being affected as well.”
Guram encourages people to not only support the immediate needs of these damaged communities, but also their needs in the following months.
“In the immediate aftermath of things, sometimes you’re not sure what you need,” Guram said. “Because if you’ve lost everything, you don’t even know where to start. So, I think it’s a message of support for the folks that are being affected, but also I would say a message of – people may need things later on when they realize what the ask is, so I would say for our community of folks who may not have been directly impacted to keep in mind – folks may need help a month or two from now, when they realize things that weren’t the immediate needs.”
ETSU activated the Response Page at https://www.etsu.edu/response.
The page has been used several times in the past to give individuals a way to provide assistance and to connect to support. The website helps connect students, faculty and staff who may have been affected by the severe weather and weather-related damage to support services. It also provides links and information regarding federal and state efforts.
To donate toward relief efforts, visit https://www.cfmt.org.
