First I want to thank Jerry Birl and other chippers who contacted me shortly after the tornado hit. I also want to apologize to anyone who I had to ignore because I just did not have time to respond.

About 1:40 AM on March 2nd Cindy and I woke up because it was really windy. Then the tornado sirens went off which we normally ignore. Then we heard to power go off and decided to head downstairs to the bathroom. As we were going down the stairs we heard the wind pick up a lot and start breaking windows as we were climbing into the bathtub. Yes we heard the "train" coming! It did not last very long but the whole house was shaking and we were wondering if we were going to die or not. Fortunately we did not get any injuries but our house was pretty severely damaged. So far the damage is around $100,000 and we were lucky. Two houses across the street and one next door had their roofs at least partially torn off. Behind the houses across the street are now several one million sq. ft warehouses. One was damaged severely the other is GONE completely. The security guard at that property was killed in her car when it got rolled around. The storm that hit us was probably an EF4 based on the damage caused and was 800 meters wide. Overall we were very lucky because our family could have lost 3 houses. The tornado hit the west side of Nashville 3/4 of a mile from my youngest daughters house, hit our house and also missed our oldest daughters house which is only 1 mile south of us.

We had our garage door pushed in about a foot, many roof shingles torn off, about 10 broken windows with 3 broken enough where the wind blew into the house taking all of the glass with it. My 10' x 20' shed did not get damaged - it got gone. Half was against a light pole near the driveway and the other half was on my heat pump unit. The largest tree in the front yard ended up on the house and it covered about 3/4 of the house. We also lost about 30 other trees on the property. The only two that were not affected were the ones that were already dying or dead.

Since we had no power (the poles for two blocks were all gone) we stayed the first night at my daughters house then one night at a hotel 20 miles away. The power got back on that 3rd day but I just got my internet late yesterday.

In the days after the storm we had up to 30 or 40 volunteers come to help with the cleanup. They brought chain saws to remove the downed trees and hauled all of the crap to the curb. Mt Juliet had 20,000 people volunteer to help with the cleanup before they said we can not take any more. We were told to haul every thing to the curb and it would eventually be picked up. They are still working on it. Church volunteer groups brought food and water for the workers and emergency supplies for homeowners in need. At one point I counted 20 cases of water on our patio table we had at the curb to hold the supplies. The tree cutting volunteers saved us a fortune in removal costs since tree cutters charge around $100 per inch of diameter in a tree. That means I saved around $30,000 in removal costs. (Trees are NOT covered by insurance unless they fall on a structure!)

Thank you to everyone for you prayers and good wishes. We will be fine, repairs are underway and no chips were damaged by the storm.
Here are some pictures of the damage. One shows a 1/4" piece of plywood that got wedged between the removable glass frame of the storm door and the main frame without breaking the glass. Just unreal!