Tenn. Bears Brunt of February Tornadoes Across South

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More than two dozen tornadoes tore through the mid-South late on Feb. 5, destroying homes, barns, and industrial buildings from Texas to Ohio. The severe thunderstorm outbreak, which included tornadoes, hail, heavy rain and lightning, killed nearly 60 people and injured hundreds more.

In Tennessee, which suffered the worst damage, collapsed wreckage trapped 50 residents inside a retirement home. The tornadoes also pulled a roof off a hangar at the international airport in Memphis. Forty miles outside Nashville, a tornado that struck a compressor station set off a natural gas fire that could be seen for miles around.

The Tennessee Emergency Management Agency reported 31 fatalities.

In Macon County, about 429 homes were damaged with more than half uninhabitable, said Keith Scruggs, emergency management director of Macon County.

Scruggs said the preliminary estimate of residential damage alone is $78 million, and that the damage was “catastrophic for a county this size.”

Madison County officials were also looking at costs associated with a tornado that tore through Union University in Jackson and killed two in the community of Denmark. Union University President David Dockery estimated damages could reach $40 million. He said 40 percent of the dorms are devastated, and three academic buildings received major damage. Officials said 13 students were trapped in the rubble.

After the first line of the storms moved into Memphis, more that 64,000 residential and business customers were left without power. Memphis Light, Gas and Water estimates the damage to the utility’s infrastructure to be about $6.5 million, said utility spokesman Richard Thompson.

Tennessee Farm Bureau Insurance received more than 4,000 property claims statewide, said spokesman Dan Batey. About 150 of the property claims were for total losses, he said.

The number of claims is still low compared to severe storms and tornadoes that hit the state in April 2006, Batey said. Farm Bureau Insurance estimated the 2006 storm damages cost about $156 million. “These numbers are not that large, but it’s going to be high — in the $100 million range,” he said.

In Mississippi, the Emergency Management Agency estimated that 20 to 30 tornadoes hit in areas above the state capital of Jackson.

Officials in Lafayette County, Miss. estimated $25 million to $30 million in damages. Jimmy Allgood, emergency management coordinator for Oxford, Miss., said 67 structures sustained damage, including 11 homes and five mobile homes that were destroyed. Nine commercial buildings including the Caterpillar plant and AbilityWorks were destroyed.

The storms also ripped through parts of Lawrence and Walker counties in Alabama, taking at least six lives and destroying dozens of homes.