CLARKSVILLE, TN (CLARKSVILLE NOW) – On Saturday afternoon, Maritza and Jonathan Torres were heading up Fort Campbell Boulevard to get lunch at Chicken Exit. Maritza, who was in the passenger seat, started getting alerts that a tornado had touched down, and she told her husband they needed to go back home.
The skies became dark and windy, and Maritza started recording.
They made it as far as the Burger King when Jonathan finally managed a U-turn, and the couple came face to face with a whirlwind of debris. Vehicles around them had stopped, and some were trapped by downed powerlines, but the young couple managed to drive away and took shelter at a nearby Walmart.
Later, when they had a moment to look at the damage to their car, they realized it was totaled.
“I can think of a hundred different ways it could have gone,” Jonathan told Clarksville Now. “There was no way we were supposed to come out of that alive.”
House collapses on family
Ronisha Burks was on her way home when she was called and told that her house on Needmore Road had been hit by the tornado. The house had collapsed with her father, brother and two nephews inside. Three of them were knocked unconscious before waking up to realize what happened.
Burks’ brother and two nephews were the first to pull themselves out. After collecting themselves, they tried to find their grandfather, fearing he may have been killed. Upon hearing his grandchildren calling for him, he tried to yell back, but to no avail. He said hearing his grandchildren’s cries gave him the strength to pull himself up and out of the rubble.
One of her nephews had a dislocated shoulder and the other a sprained ankle, Burks said. Her brother had a head injury and her father hurt his back to the point he can barely walk.
“It’s the holidays and we could be planning four funerals right now, but God had other plans,” Burks said.
In addition to losing the house and everything inside, Burks and her family also lost their five cars that were located onsite. To help donate to the family rebuilding, the Burks have set up a GoFundMe page.
Jordan Renfro and Christian Brown contributed to this report.
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