When tornadoes are only the first of your worries

It was 1 o’clock in the morning when it struck. Winston Morelock and his wife, Wilma Faye, were in bed in their home in East Nashville that they’d shared for 42 years.

The tornado sirens pierced through the night, and then they stopped. There was no sound, Mr. Morelock recalls, and then “all at once it was on top of us.” 

Broken glass, chunks of wood, and parts of the ceiling flew everywhere. Mr. Morelock pulled the mattress over himself and his wife just as the roof and side of their house was ripped away by the swirling storm.

“The next morning, at first light, when I saw what was left of our home, I fell apart and started to cry,” Mr. Morelock says. “I was in shock. Shaking all over. Crying. We came so close to death.”

A cluster of tornadoes swept through middle Tennessee before dawn on Tuesday, March 3, killing at least two dozen people, with thousands of buildings damaged or destroyed and streets impassable with debris and downed power lines. Many more were left without power

A surge of volunteersGetting creative“Taking it day to day”“A second to breathe”