Severe storms left thousands without power and brought down trees across the Chattanooga area Tuesday night.
As of 9 p.m. Tuesday night, 2,600 customers of EPB were without power, the utility said. Because of the severity of the damage, some homes won't have their power restored until this morning. The highest concentration of outages occurred in the North Chattanooga, Red Bank and Mountain Creek areas.
An Ooltewah home caught fire after it was struck by lightning. Firefighters responded to 4808 Alabama Road and said the house was "full of fire," according to a news release from Hamilton County Emergency Services. Firefighters were able to contain the fire within 30 minutes. Damages are listed at $75,000. The house was home to a family of six, but no one was injured, the release said.
Earlier, the storm system produced a tornado in Cookeville, Tenn., about 100 miles north of Chattanooga. Josh Womack of Putnam County 911 said the weather service hadn't confirmed it was a tornado, but multiple trained spotters reported a tornado touched down. One business had its roof torn off, but no injuries were reported there either.
In North Chattanooga, Chris Rutledge and his family decided to head down to the basement as the storm warnings worsened. They heard a strange popping sound and soon ran upstairs to see what it was.
"At first, we thought it was hail hitting the windows, and then we realized the tree had fallen," Rutledge said.
A maple tree in the family's side yard had fallen across their neighbor's house, taking down a power line with it.
Though the trunk barely dodged the main house, the home showed signs of exterior damage as branches completely obscured the front. Throughout North Chattanooga, trash cans and branches littered the streets.
As many as nine streets in Red Bank were closed because of the storm, a police officer said. Two were Hedgewood Drive and Lynda Drive, both blocked by multiple downed lines and trees.
Police said multiple agencies responded after a house collapsed at 140 Lynda Drive. No one was injured.
On Hedgewood Drive, there were multiple reports of trees falling and nearly falling on cars.
"That wind," said John Ledford of 310 Hedgewood Drive, "I never seen it do what it did."
Ledford was on his porch when a tree in his neighbor's yard fell just a few feet short of Ledford's red '94 Chevy truck. He had thought about cutting down the tree in the past, but decided against it. Inside his carport, his fishing boat sat parked.
But he wasn't worried about the boat. Just the truck. It's 21 years old, but it only has 109,000 miles on it, he said.
"I was wondering if insurance would cover it," he said.
Down the street, Tayler Nelson of 112 Hedgewood Drive, heard thunder that sounded like gunshots. Watching from the window in her laundry room with her boyfriend, she wondered whether she should grab her baby, Roman, from the bedroom. Just then, at 6:30 p.m., she watched the tree across the street tip over.
It crashed forward onto the roof of her boyfriend's Jeep Wrangler and onto the trunk of her Lexus IS 250.
"If it would have just been a little more this way," she said, pointing to her left, "it would have hit our house."
An hour later, on the front porch, as he rocked, Roman wailed.
"Hey, little man," Nelson said. "We don't have no power. I don't know what we're going to do."
Staff writers Kate Belz, Shelly Bradbury, Tyler Jett and Evan Hoopfer contributed to this story.