PUTNAM COUNTY, Tenn. — First came the weather app alerts.
Then, as Mike Brown and his wife took cover in the laundry room with their 14-month-old son, the tornado hit.
“You could hear the glass shattering, the wind blowing. I mean, it sounded like a freight train coming through,” he said. “Nothing prepares you for this.”
On the next street over, many of Brown’s neighbors were injured, and 4-year-old Hattie Collins was killed.
It looked like a bomb exploded here, he said.
Once the storm passed, Brown sprang to action.
He and his family were fine — the 14-month-old slept through the whole thing, he said — but outside, he had to dig through what remained of a home to rescue a husband and wife trapped by debris.
“He was pinned down on top of her. She had multiple lower body injuries, was pretty unstable,” he said.
They made it out, and a day later, Brown is counting his blessings that this is all the storm did to his home.
Debris from dozens of homes scattered like jigsaw puzzle pieces across many Putnam County neighborhoods Wednesday.
Very little remains of Dennis Padiernos’ house — but he and his wife managed to take refuge in a bathroom when the tornado literally shook them awake.
“Soon as we got up, like, two seconds later, the wall caved in and the ceiling was falling on top of us as we were running to the bathroom,” he said.
Yesterday, Padiernos’ friends were fearing the worst. Neighbors said he and his wife hadn’t made it through the storm.
But Wednesday, sadness gave way to relief when it came clear both husband and wife were very much alive.
The same can’t be said for some of Padiernos’ neighbors.
“We knew them,” he said of their neighbors. “We were lucky.”
Their luck didn’t extend to the house he called home for two-and-a-half years.
It’s gone — and so is so much of what this Filipino immigrant has worked his entire life for.
“It represents our dream basically. We were here to settle down and just make a life for ourselves,” Padiernos said.
