From 1998 through 2012, Bill Tittle was Hamilton County’s rock.
Tittle was here at midnight on New Year’s Eve in 2000, sitting in Hamilton County’s emergency command center as the world expected mass blackouts when computer clocks rolled into the new millennium. He was here to help prepare local security precautions after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He was here again in May 2003, when floods swamped 1,000 businesses and 3,000 homes.
In 2005, he shepherded Chattanoogans to open our arms to hundreds of Hurricane Katrina refugees flown here for shelter.
And, without doubt, in 2011 he saved hundreds if not thousands of lives when he rallied county residents for three days with frightful weather forecasts before more than 10 tornadoes razed neighborhoods in Apison, Collegedale, Red Bank, Signal Mountain and Harrison. Ignoring criticism, he insisted that news people sit in on emergency planning sessions so we might saturate residents with warnings. In that horrible spring outbreak of tornadoes, cities in Missouri and Alabama had staggering fatalities, but in this area only 81 lives were lost. Without William H. “Bill” Tittle III, we could have seen much worse.
Tittle retired in January 2013 at age 77. He died Wednesday at age 80.
We have lost a very, very good man and excellent public servant. We will miss him.