At least 6 dead after severe storms, tornadoes hit Tennessee, leave trail of damage

Severe storms that tore through central Tennessee killed six people Saturday and sent nearly two dozen to the hospital as homes and businesses were damaged in multiple cities.

Three people, including a child, were killed after a tornado struck Montgomery County north of Nashville near the Kentucky state line, county officials said in a news release. Montgomery County officials said another 23 there were treated for injuries at hospitals.

And the Nashville Emergency Operation Center said in a post on a social media account that another three people were killed by severe storms there. 

The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office noted it was “still in the search and rescue phase of this disaster.”

“We’ve been hit very hard by a tornado here in Clarksville and Montgomery County,” Montgomery County Mayor Wes Golden said in a video posted to social media Saturday evening.

Police and firefighters in Clarksville were responding to multiple reports of damage in the northern part of the city, which is located north of Nashville near the Kentucky state line.

“We still have a lot of power lines down, there are a lot of areas that are unsafe,” Golden said.

Residents were asked to stay at home while first responders evaluated the situation. 

“We know there’s extensive damage throughout the community, so we need to take care of families who are desperately in need of help,” Clarksville Mayor Joe Pitts said in the video.

The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office said in an earlier statement that a tornado touched down around 2 p.m. local time and damaged several homes. 

A shelter was set up at a local high school.

According to utility tracker PowerOutage.us, more than 76,000 customers were without power in Tennessee as of Saturday night. The Tennessee city of Springfield, located about 30 miles east of Clarksville, reported Saturday night that power was out to the entire city, and asked its residents to stay off the roads. 

The National Weather Service issued multiple tornado warnings in Tennessee, and said it planned to survey an area where an apparent tornado hit in Kentucky.

The storm came nearly two years to the day after the National Weather Service recorded 41 tornadoes through a handful of states, including 16 in Tennessee and eight in Kentucky. A total of 81 people died in Kentucky alone.