Storms Hit Suddenly and Impacted Lives

The Daily Corinthian   |   February 10, 2008
By Stacy Jones

Many of us watched our local evening news broadcasts Monday night when weather forecasters predicted a cold front on the horizon. It may have been difficult then to imagine frigid weather again when February temperatures were soaring into the uncharacteristically high 70s. But forecasters also forewarned: the mixture of those layers with extremely differing temperatures established a ripe situation for severe weather.

For most of Tuesday, the weather seemed dismal but calm. I was anxious to vote in Tennessee’s Super Tuesday primary. Around 4:30, as I prepared to leave my house, I heard the first distant rumbles of thunder from the west, as storm clouds jutted across the Mississippi River into Memphis.

I drove the half-mile to a Presbyterian church, my assigned polling location. Four people waited in line in front of me, and three people stood at the machines, casting their electronic votes. I signed in and obtained my access card for the machines.

Within a few minutes, I was next in line to make my way over to one of the three small tri-fold machines that stood on wobbly tripods in front of me. Moments later, though, neighborhood tornado sirens began sounding around us, and a woman supervising the election activity announced that the minister of the church and some of her employees were watching the news in her office. She suggested we all take shelter in an interior room away from the glassed foyer.

So we gathered as relative strangers in a room off to the side. Not long after, we could hear the torrents of rain pelting the rooftop. A woman sitting beside me mentioned several places in north Mississippi where the storm was predicted to hit.

I simply wanted to vote and return home. A little less than half an hour, the supervisor gave the all clear for us to return to our positions. Within minutes, I had cast my nod for a candidate and headed to my car. The sky appeared to brighten, and the rain had dwindled to nothing more than mist and sprinkles.

Once I was home, Mike and I watched television to find out the latest developments. All of the local broadcasting stations had been focused on continuous weather coverage since late afternoon.

Suddenly, the weather condition changed. The sky grew ominously dark, even though it was not quite yet nightfall. The rain had all but stopped, and the wind halted. A palpable tension hung in the air.

The television weather forecaster then predicted some suspicious activity near the airport, perhaps a hook echo on the radar that often signals possible tornadic activity. I called my sister, who lives closer to the airport, to make sure she was safe.

We talked for a few minutes, and the wind suddenly rumbled and whistled against our house, shaking the glass on our doors, a sound unlike anything I have ever heard before. I told my sister I needed to go.

Mike came from the kitchen into our den. I asked if he thought we ought to get inside the closet under the staircase. I had no more than posed the question, and the wind settled. If we had been using our intellect, we would have already been inside that closet.

Shortly thereafter, we heard the announcement on the news that a tornado had struck the Hickory Ridge Mall three miles south of us, collapsing the wall of the Sears store, overturning cars in the parking lot, and tossing utility poles to the ground. I felt fairly certain then that the forceful gust of wind we had heard outside our house was the north end of that storm.

At first, there were thought to be no fatalities in the mall wreckage, although at least one was reported later. At a logistics company in Southaven, Miss., three employees were also not so lucky, when the building collapsed on top of them.

By some miracle, however, not a single student at Union University in Jackson, Tenn., was killed when an even stronger tornado struck their campus. Some might say the incident is not so much a miracle as the result of careful planning. Jackson has a history of attracting tornados, and students seemed well prepared in advance of the coming storm.

A niece of my mother’s friend huddled in the bathtub with a group of other young female students. She said they could feel the tub shake as the winds, estimated at 175 miles an hour, damaged or obliterated almost every single building on the small campus.

In my hometown, in McNairy County, one of the greatest losses was the Elam Mattress Company, a family-owned business since 1979. My family has known the Elam’s for many years, patronizing their business on several occasions. Now they must completely rebuild if they wish to return to life as it was before the storm.

The rebuilding of material things is only part of the process. Some will have to rebuild entire lives. A family of three—father, mother, and daughter—in Atkins, Ark., was killed in the storm. A mother in Castalian Springs, near Nashville, Tenn., lost her daughter but still has her 11-month-old grandson.

The baby was discovered by a firefighter in a field in the aftermath. David Harmon, the rescuer, thought he was a plastic doll—until the youngster moved and began crying. I was touched by a widely published photograph of the child, Kyson Stowell, in which his blue eyes shine brightly, offering some light for one grieving grandmother after such a terrible storm that came so quickly and devastated so many.

(Stacy Jones, a Southerner, is a Master of Fine Arts student in fiction writing at The University of Memphis. She is a native of Guys, Tenn., and her columns, which appear on Sundays, are archived at Southern-Drawl.com.)