CLARKSVILLE, TN (CLARKSVILLE NOW) – Tonya Harmon’s home was destroyed by Saturday’s tornado in Clarksville – except for the one room the family took shelter in, praying for their lives as the winds ripped through their neighborhood.
Harmon moved here about four years ago to support her son’s family after he died in a car accident, she told Clarksville Now. Saturday afternoon, she was in her bedroom while her niece cooked dinner for her and the children.
DON’T MISS A STORY: Click here to sign up for our free daily email newsletter
“We live by the base (Fort Campbell), and it sounded like a plane was coming really low to the house,” Harmon said, “and it dawned on me: That’s not a plane.
“So I jerked open the door, and my daughter was running down the hallway with the kids. And I just took everybody to the floor and told them to please start praying,” Harmon said. “The whole house was shaking. You could just hear things being ripped apart around us and trees falling.”
Then it stopped. “Everything just started calming down, and I opened the door, and my house was just gone. Everything was just gone. But the room we were in – it’s perfect.
“The whole rest of the house was destroyed,” she said “Everything else was lost but the room we were in.”
UPS driver delivered to safety
UPS driver Trey found himself caught in the storm Saturday afternoon in a big box truck with nowhere to go. Luckily a Clarksville family took him in.
Smith was making his rounds when he heard the tornado sirens and pulled over near Fort Sumter Drive and Citadel Drive. “I looked off in the distance and I saw the tornado,” Smith told Clarksville Now.
He also saw a family – Adam and Katie Goad – and they rushed him inside, with the funnel cloud coming closer.
“They welcomed me in with open arms, and we took cover in their bathroom downstairs. We put a mattress over their kids and everything. We didn’t know what to expect because everything was happening so fast,” Smith said. “If it wasn’t for that family that took me in I don’t know what I would have done.”
Storm cuts home in half
A woman and her children narrowly survived when the tornado destroyed their home on Evans Road.
“I looked out the window and saw debris flying,” Kassondra Adcock told Clarksville Now. “I jumped up and ran and got my kids and pushed them to my mother’s room. We prayed. The room that we were in was the only part of the house that didn’t get touched.”
The storm tore through their home, cutting it in half.
Teen rushes into wrecked home for Bible
Eric Ware, 16, who lives on Garrettsburg Road, was working in the Dover area when he started getting alerts on his phone. At first, he dismissed it. But when the second one came through, he realized things may be getting serious. And then the phone calls started.
“I called my brother because it’s just me, my brother, and my Granny that live together, and said, ‘Hey, man, what’s going on?'” Ware told Clarksville Now. “I just remember the panic in his voice.”
Luckily, Ware’s family was at Walmart taking shelter. It was a long time before police allowed people back onto Garrettsburg, and Ware’s family arrived to find a tree had fallen on one side of the house, right over Ware’s room.
When police finally let him through, only one thing was on his mind: his Bible. It had been sitting on his bed when he left home.
“I broke in through the side and managed to get to my bed. I got my Bible, and it was unscratched, just how I left it,” Ware said. He took a message from that: “Even through the midst of a literal storm, I know that everything’s going to be all right.”
Jordan Renfro, Wesley Irvin, Lee Erwin and Chris Smith contributed to this report.
MORE: How to help survivors of Clarksville tornado with supplies, volunteers, donations
MORE: Do you need help? Where to find shelter, supplies, food and more after tornado in Clarksville
MORE: Clarksville EF-3 tornado had 150 mph winds, 11,600 still without power | VIDEO