The 1998 Nashville tornado -- 10 years ago today
I have so many memories of the Nashville tornado in 1998. My neighborhood was one of the epicenters of destruction 10 years ago today. Tonight, my church hosts part of the city's official commemoration, with an original choral piece we commissioned for the occasion. See The Gardener, composed by David K. Childs, conducted by Joe Lee, tonight at East End United Methodist Church at 7 p.m. I'd get there early if I were you. I'm only guaranteed a seat because I'm in the choir.
I'm going to share some scattered memories here.
- The tornado. I remember the afternoon very vividly. Back then I wasn't nearly so paranoid about the weather, so I don't remember any apprehension about the storm coming. But it was very clear as it began arriving that we were in for some truly horrible weather. It's the only time I can remember actually going to the basement of my building for weather. Seems like the alarm went off a couple times that day. I was one of the first ones back upstairs after the tornado passed by -- and it did pass directly by my building. My boss stayed upstairs to watch.
- When I got back upstairs, Rex, Will Weaver, Lewis Pennock and it seems like a couple other folks and I all piled into Will's car -- an SUV, I remember, because people were piled in the back, too -- and headed to Centennial Park. Rex had seen the storm heading that way. We arrived to see the dozens of trees destroyed by the storm, and saw the paramedics pulling Vanderbilt student Kevin Longinotti from the wreckage of the picnic shelter. He died at the hospital. I remember standing there, a decent distance back of course, but feeling like this was a movie. It just didn't seem real.
- We went back to the office. You started to hear from friends around town -- not everyone had a cell phone back then :) -- and it became obvious that East Nashville was hit badly. I saw the destroyed sanctuary of St. Ann's Episcopal Church on Woodland Street on the news, and I left work for the day. When I did, another tornado came through -- I heard it on the radio as I was driving down West End. I made a quick detour and huddled in the basement of the Towers dorms with my sister and a few dozen other Vandy students, while we wondered where the hundreds of other Towers residents were. No doubt up in their rooms 14 floors above, playing video games.
- I drove into East Nashville and it was immediately obvious that the damage was worse than anything you could have imagined. I remember having to zig-zag the blocks several times on my way to our house on the 1600 block of Fatherland Street -- trees, power poles and downed lines choked much of the neighborhood.
- Many people in Nashville have discovered this great neighborhood in the years since 1998. What you still don't see, even 10 years later, is how wooded this neighborhood was 10 years ago. The whole neighborhood was shady. Thanks to a number of neighborhood organizations, Releaf Nashville and other groups, hundreds and hundreds of trees have been planted here in the last 10 years. But I still shake my head when I drive down Stratton Ave. or Rosebank -- streets that looked so different the first time I saw them. The houses are almost all the same, but the streetscape is completely different. Basically, you can assume that any young tree you see in East Nashville is replacing a mature tree....and many of the bare yards were once shaded. You see a lot of yards like mine -- where mature, understory trees like dogwoods and redwoods still thrive, but are no doubt a little more stressed than they should be, having lost the hackberries and maples that used to shade them.
- At the time, my then-husband and I lived in a cute little house on Fatherland, with two enormous trees that were the entire front yard. I was so relieved to find that neither had crushed our home [either easily could have wiped out most of the structure]. Instead, we'd just lost one major branch, which came to rest with its leaves just brushing our neighbor's car, parked in the street. Our house ended up having about $4,000 worth of damage, as I recall -- the insurance types determined the storm had lifted the corner of the house enough to send cracks running through most of the walls, but no true structural damage.
- I had left the dogs outside, as I used to do every day. When I arrived home, the fence was blown open but they were still in the yard. Absolutely terrified. Sally [now 12 years old] to this day is petrified of rain and most especially thunderstorms. She doesn't just have to be inside, she has to be in the room you're in during a storm.
- Of course, everyone was without power and phones. I remember the phones came back first, within a couple of days. Our block was among the first to get phone service back. We were all living on the front porches, sharing news of the cleanup, drinking beer in the evenings after a hard day's cleanup effort, so when Craig and Denise's phone came back down the street, everyone else went in to check theirs. We were without power for 10 days. I don't remember, did we have a gas water heater? Did we shower at the Y? Or brave the cold?
- In the first days after the storm, there were who-knows-how many potlucks in East Nashville, big gatherings where people ate gallons of ice cream, or roasted hot dogs on the grill, or ate whatever had begun to thaw in the freezer. Cakes. Roasts. Casseroles. People with gas stoves or grills played host, and you brought whatever you had.
- I have no idea how many people from East Nashville actually worked [you know, at their jobs] in the week after the storm. Not many.
- Our friends Paige and Bob had just moved to DC in the weeks before the storm, and they had not yet closed on the sale of their Nashville house. We picked our way five blocks over trees and power lines [were they still live? who knew? who wanted to find out?] to see it Friday morning the 17th at sunrise. It was not destroyed, but close. An entire wall gone. Both enormous pines in the front were down, one crushing the porch. Their enormous hackberry in the back, through the side and the back of the house. The inside -- despite having been empty -- was still ruined, though no possession had been there to scatter.
- After seeing so much destruction, you'd think you become numb to it, like you do when you see such things on television. When it's your neighborhood, you don't get numb. Every new thing you see is another blow. When you know the houses, and the people, and the trees, you don't get numb. You wish you would, but you don't.
- Almost immediately rescue and cleanup efforts began. Our church, East End United Methodist, served as a hub for relief efforts, organized by the church, UMCOR and the Lockeland Springs Neighborhood Association. The 8yo's dad didn't show up the last two weeks of classes at Owen [where he nonetheless managed to graduate with his MBA, three weeks after the tornado], and instead spent the time getting friendly with a chainsaw. So many of my good friends were in the middle of things. Me? I'm not so good with a chainsaw, but I do remember going to bed tired every night for days and days and days. It's just astounding how much there is to do when something like this happens.
- Truckloads and vanfuls and busloads of people came to help. I don't know where they came from. From everywhere. We were so grateful for the people who just showed up, knowing there would be work to do for willing hands. There was.
- I remember later in the summer of 1998. The day I woke up and realized I didn't hear a chainsaw. And it was something you noticed, the not hearing. Because they were the pulse of East Nashville for weeks and weeks after April 16.
- The blue tarps -- all the cool roofs had one -- took longer to disappear, but they, too, finally slipped away.
- My friends finally sold their house, but not before months of insurance wrangling and legal hassles. Today, it's completely restored, and I know the people who live it in again [it's sold again in the meantime].
