Copyright © 2003 The Episcopal Diocese of East Tennessee

A photo taken shortly after an F-3 tornado hit Mossy Grove in November 2002 shows damage to homes and landscape. A flagpole and "UT" rock were unaffected.

photos by Sharon Rasmussen

A photo of the same area from another angle taken a few days before the one-year anniversary shows newly rebuilt homes and the unfinished house of Dara Hamm, Lois Tidwell's daughter.

After a year, it’s clear the memories are still sharp.

Lois Tidwell, a Mossy Grove resident who lost her home, recalls moments before the tornado hit. “A minute or two before the storm came, my husband came in and said, ‘well, we made the news – we’re going to have a tornado.’

“It just came,” she said with disbelief. “That was all the warning we had. I didn’t take it as a warning. We’ve never had tornadoes around here. It was so loud – I’ve never heard anything like it.”

Afterward, “We went outside and could hear everybody going on. It was so dark,” she said. “We could see the lights of the rescuers coming in, but you couldn’t tell until the next day” that Mossy Grove had sustained heavy damage.

“There’s no big trees anymore ... our yard was just full,” she said. “My husband had always wanted to cut back those huge oak trees, and they were just pulled up and thrown on the house.”

June White, a resident of Harriman and member of St. Andrew’s who worked on the parish’s disaster relief committee, said the area’s history of escaping violent storms meant this one took everyone by surprise. “What had happened in the past, it would go up the mountain on the other side and kind of jump – this time, it came down the mountain and got trapped” in the bowl-shaped valley.

Sharon Pinner, who is married to
St. Andrew, Harriman, rector
the Rev. Joe Pinner, recalls with Mike Vann, chief of the Joyner Volunteer
Fire Dept., how his agency responded to the disaster.

The difference between old and new gear is clear at the Joyner Volunteer Fire Dept., which has received some grants and donations to replace equipment and expand emergency readiness.

Pinner said a mobile command center was brought to the parking lot of the Apostolic Church of Mossy Grove. She assisted emergency workers with triage at the church, assessing the needs of the injured and working to stabilize them. Her husband was stationed on a ham radio.

She said a nurse, having seen her husband’s clerical collar, asked him to aid a family who had lost two members. “Joe was the only clergy there that night,” she said. The medical staff needed him too. “The nurses really didn’t know what they were walking into – how bad it was going to be.”

The story of one family makes clear the storm’s power.

“The Woody family has three kids,” Pinner said. “They lived in an old trailer. Jimmy had been laid off, and Donna was a nursing student at the technical center in Harriman. One of the kids was in the shower when the tornado hit and just exploded the trailer. It blew them all over creation. Her husband had a broken neck. She had a broken back. The kids were scattered – thrown 200-300 yards.

“They all survived,” she said. “Jimmy was in the little church building during triage. Quinton was in the building where I was, and I had someone carry him over because he couldn’t walk – his back was hurt, and he had cuts and abrasions and been hit in the head. They brought in Sara in a chair because they were afraid to move her – she was covered in mud and was in pain. Donna was the last in. One of the neighbors had found Nate and wrapped him in a blanket, so before the ambulance got there, we had all the Woodys in a row,” so each would know the others had been found.

Later that night, the command center was moved to the Red Cap factory building midway between Mossy Grove and Joyner. Its owner donated it for the disaster-relief effort, and it became a distribution center for household goods and construction materials over the next three months, she said. “40,000-50,000 square feet, and it was full. We had 7 trailer truckloads of furniture that had been donated through Mission of Hope ... we had yellow loveseats: camelback, English-style ... they were pretty, but not a hot item” for people with basic needs, she laughed.

“There were a lot of good folks, good groups who came up here,” Pinner said. “This guy who goes to the Episcopal Church in Wytheville, Va., called me one day and said, ‘I’ve got three truckloads of stuff to bring – where do you want it?’ They brought microwaves, they brought toys, they brought food. They brought all kinds of stuff.”

She said he called back later, asking if people needed Bibles. The tiny Wytheville church bought many boxes of Bibles and sent them to the center. “They went just like that,” Pinner said.

Disaster relief through St. Andrew’s included monetary disbursements of nearly $48,000, Pinner said. Episcopal Relief and Development sent a check to the diocese for $25,000, and other donations – mostly small, but a few larger ones – were funneled through the diocese. Fifty-eight families applied and received aid.

“We gave the Joyner Fire Dept. $1,700 to replace coats that had not been returned after that night and to get new boots,” Pinner said. “And we gave $140 to the amateur radio club to buy some more radios in case of future disasters.”

Many St. Andrew’s parishioners pitched in to help with relief efforts. “People took part in this who hadn’t been involved before,” she said. “We learned a lot – we’re still learning – about what St. Andrew’s is as a parish.”

According to the News Sentinel in Knoxville, other assistance included almost $393,000 to 106 applicants by the Federal Emergency Management Association, and the Small Business Administration made loans of more than $2½ million to area residents and businesses.

Mike Vann, a resident for nearly 30 years, became chief of the Joyner Volunteer Fire Dept. about six months ago.

“That was a terrible night, I know that,” he says. The firefighters converged on the fire hall that night as they do whenever trouble strikes. “Everybody knows to come here to see if anybody needs help or if trees are in the road,” he said, and they assisted in the cleanup effort in the weeks that followed.

“We’ve got a lot more people interested in the fire dept. now,” he says. “At that time, we had nine volunteers, and now we’ve got 18. We’ve also received a grant from FEMA, which has helped us – a $29,600 grant: $15,000 was for turn-out gear, $12,000 was for new SCBAs, which is a breathing apparatus – and also when you get a grant, you have to get a computer where you turn in your reports to Nashville,” he said.

A lot of the unit’s old hand-me-down gear has been replaced, but the volunteer group struggles to keep on top of the job. Morgan County’s tax base is small, and the area the unit covers is large and includes two state prison facilities – with perhaps another in the works. The small population renders impractical fund-raising events by which other, more urban units supplement tight budgets.

The county now has a disaster team, however, and the county EMA has outfitted a trailer with radios. “All you’ve got to do is hook up to it and go,” Vann said.

Firefighters are learning more about how to spot signs of developing bad weather. A federal weather agency team recently held a “skywatch” class. “They gave us materials on what types of clouds to look for,” Vann said. “But they said the chances are 70-30: You get more tornados at night.”

It’s been about a year since the tornado hit. “Yesterday, at 1:00 in the afternoon, it was dark,” Pinner said. “It was hot, and I [said], ‘the people in Morgan County right now are headed for their basements.’ ”

Vann agreed. “Everybody I talked to, they never really looked at the sky,” he said. “Everybody’s looking at the sky now.”

Related story in this issue:

• Mossy Grove resident hopes home soon finished