Tim Troutman spent Wednesday doing an autopsy of a tornado.
A meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Morristown, Tenn., Troutman began his day surveying damage in splintered trees just east of DuPont Parkway in Hixson.
Within moments, he was squinting at several large pieces of sheet metal high in the tall trees on the ridge behind the Chicka-mauga Dam. He also examined a snapped-off tree in the gravel lot next to the dam, where three construction trailers owned by contractor C.J. Mahan once stood.
When a tornado roared across the dam Tuesday night, one trailer collapsed and the other two were hurled aloft and splashed down into nearby North Chickamauga Creek.
Quietly, Troutman scribbled in his notebook, then turned and made his first deduction.
“This is typical of an EF2 tornado,” he said. “The winds here were probably 115 mph.”
The tornado, described by Troutman’s calculations using the formulas of the Enhanced Fujita scale, was about 100 yards wide. It traveled along the ground in the Hixson area for just over a mile, first touching down at the TVA power towers near the dam and ending as it began to climb up Big Ridge, located on the other side of the dam along Lake Resort Drive.
As it plowed into the LakeShore on the Hill Apartments, tearing off roofs and masonry on two three-story brick buildings, the twister was at full force, said Troutman, a tornado surveyor for 11 years.
“Here it was 125 mph,” he said without a hint of waver.
Farther up the ridge, the tornado pushed the fence that once topped the Chickamauga Dam past Jim Stanley’s head as he stood on the balcony of his new house, mesmerized by the funnel cloud. Stanley raced back inside and rushed with his wife, Lisa, to his home’s lowest floor before the winds flung his roof into the yard across the street.
Looking at the roof shingles lying everywhere and a huge toppled tree, Troutman said this was where the devil wind ran out of steam and took to the sky again.
“I’d say it was about 90 mph here,” he said.
COUNTING THE DAMAGE
“We really dodged a bullet here,” said Bill Tittle, chief of emergency management at Hamilton County Emergency Services. “No one was hurt except in the pileup on the dam.”
Five people suffered minor injuries in a seven-car accident caused when the twister tore the fencing off the Highway 153 bridge over Chickamauga Dam, tossing some of it into the road.
Tittle said 120 units at LakeShore on the Hill were damaged and 50 are uninhabitable until repairs are made. He said about a dozen homes in the Lakeshore area have roof or window damage, and another 10 to 15 have outdoor property damage. The Stanleys’ home also has been labeled uninhabitable for now.
On Wednesday, Chattanooga Area Red Cross staff and volunteers set up a shelter at the Hixson United Methodist Church. Some displaced residents stopped by for food at the shelter, but as of 5 p.m., no one had registered to stay overnight, said John Hitchens, Red Cross emergency service director.
The C.J. Mahan construction trailers — the company is working on the dam’s lock — and the Gold Point Marina, where trees and a gazebo were damaged, were the only businesses reporting damage, Tittle said.
TVA and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers officials said the integrity of the dam and lock was not damaged by the storm.
About 3,000 EPB customers lost power during the storm, but by late Wednesday power had been restored to almost everyone, EPB officials said.
Warnings and watchfulness
Ken Wilkerson, chief of medical services for Hamilton County Emergency Services, said Tuesday’s tornado is one of the most well-documented funnel clouds the region has seen because it occurred in daylight.
Firefighters and police officers at their agency service centers along Amnicola Highway could see the tornado as it moved along the river about 6:45 p.m. Many photographed and videoed the twister with their cell phones.
Many Big Ridge residents, too, shot pictures as the twister approached them.
On Wednesday, Emergency Services workers put many of the donated pictures on a CD that will be forwarded to Troutman for his National Weather Service storm survey.
But the sightings were not the first alerts of the tornado.
Before the tornado touched down, National Weather Service watchers saw rotation in the clouds on Doppler radar in the Suck Creek area of Marion County and western Hamilton County, Troutman said. The region already was under a tornado watch, and at 6:16 p.m., a tornado warning was issued for Hamilton County.
Even after the tornado lifted off Big Ridge, it continued to be visible in the sky and on Doppler radar in the state Highway 58 area and into Bradley County.
Hamilton County has 108 warning sirens, Tittle said, but they are used only to warn people who live within 10 miles of the Sequoyah Nuclear Plant in the event of a radiation leak.
“With the terrain we have — all the ridges and valleys — this area would require so many that it’s just not practical for us to use sirens here,” Tittle said.
In this climate, with windows often closed because of heat or cold and music or TV on, most people wouldn’t hear the sirens, which Tittle said are expensive and difficult to maintain.
Troutman agreed, saying the National Weather Service recommends weather radios and weather-alert devices.
“It’s best to have more than one kind,” Troutman said. “And have a plan. Tornadoes can happen any time, anywhere. Know what to do to protect yourself when the high winds do approach.”
Staff writers Dave Flessner and Todd South contributed to this story.
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