Senator Todd Gardenhire is no stranger to tornadoes, so it wasn't unexpected that he was in a hotel in Nashville early Tuesday morning that was "a hundred yards from the touch down."
The senator from Lookout Valley said he was on the sixth floor of the Clarion Hotel when he was awakened by the sound of windows being blown out and doors slamming.
He said he ran for the bathroom and held the door shut until the powerful tornado was finally passed.
"It was 15-20 seconds, but it felt like an hour. It sounded just like a train going by," he said.
Senator Gardenhire said he went to the room next to him where a mother and daughter were staying. Their windows had blown out and the room was "destroyed." He said the mother suffered some cuts from flying glass.
The senator said he was told by hotel staff to stay the night in his room because "live power lines were down everywhere."
The next morning he went out to the parking lot and was met by the "eerie" sight of a tractor trailer blown on its side in the lot. He found that his car had significant damage when a power pole had broken off, hit a vehicle near his, then slammed into the side of his car. It did frame damage and knocked out some windows. Still, he was able to drive the car back to Chattanooga.
Senator Gardenhire said Rep. Yusuf Hakeem was on the floor above him (7th). He said he later noticed on his phone "where Yusuf had called to ask if I was alright."
He said it is his fourth tornado. He was coming back from college with a group when their car was pushed into a field in Arkansas. He was staying at the Red Roof Inn in Nashville at the time of the damaging 2013 tornado. It blew the roof off the motel. He said, "I told my wife I was staying at the 'No Roof Inn.' " A third was when a tornado came through his neighborhood in Chattanooga.
County Mayor Jim Coppinger said the tornado cost him a planned meeting with Governor Bill Lee that had been set for Tuesday at 3:30 p.m. The governor had to cancel because he was dealing with the storm that caused 24 deaths in Middle Tennessee.
The county mayor was among Hamilton County officials in Nashville for "Day on the Hill" to meet with legislators.
He said he was at the Doubletree Hotel near the Capitol in a sound sleep when he heard what he thought was an Amber Alert. He said he began to hear sirens and could see that the power was out at the hotel.
Guests at the Doubletree were told to gather in the lobby, and the county mayor walked six stories down and then later six stories back up to his room.
Criminal Court Clerk Vince Dean said the storm woke him up too at his room at the Hermitage Hotel. He said he looked out the window and could see tall cranes at nearby high rise buildings under construction "spinning like weather vanes."
He said, "It was eerie with debris flying and the rain going sideways."
Clerk Dean said the location is less than a mile from the storm's epic center around Five Points.