This last week has been a very stressful one with all the storms we had in this area on Wed, April 27Th. A total of 5 tornadoes went through our county (Bradley). Two were on the west edge of the county and went south to north parallel to Interstate 75. Three others went from the SW part of the county and angled to the NE through the entire Bradley County. 285 homes totally destroyed, 195 with major damage, 176 with minor damage with another 120 affected by the tornadoes. I’m sure these numbers will be adjusted as the clean up progresses. The death toll now stands at 9 with one person on this list that is still unidentified. A MI women here visiting her son was among those killed. There is still 4 roads closed due to powers lines down or trees. Our county is a heavily wooden area. There is so many trees down everywhere. Some homes seem to be untouched while all the trees around the house where blown downed by the storm. Two elementary schools heavily damaged. Only 3 weeks left of this school year so they are trying to get set up in temporary quarters to finish the year. Electricity needs to be restored to some other school facilities before they reopen this coming week. Went out into the city Sat morning to get supplies. They don’t want people out and about if they don’t need to be. The worst storm Wed evening came within half a mile of a new elementary school that is under construction but won’t be finished until sometime this summer. It was amazing how the Cleveland historical downtown area and Lee University as well as the entire business districts were by-passed. As bad as it is here it is much worse in AL and GA. with hundreds of deaths (more still missing) and thousands still without electricity. Stories can be read on the clevelandbanner.com website if anyone is interested.
It seemed that as each storm came through they were a little farther east until that last one was less than 5 miles from our house. We live in the very eastern part of the county (only half a mile from the Bradley/Polk County Line). We had no damaged to homes in our neighborhood.
We all need to continue to pray for all those who lost loved ones, those that lost their homes and businesses. They have had their lives changed forever by these storms.
