Hallie Bailey, nurse manager at Parkridge Valley Child and Adolescent campus, didn't yet know the devastation she would find outside after the Easter Sunday tornado that ripped through eastern portions of Hamilton County. But she knew that she had to get to her patients.
Around 2:30 a.m., not long after waiting out the storm in a closet with her husband and children at their home near Hamilton Place, Bailey packed a bag and ventured out to meet up with two of her co-workers along Shallowford Road.
They were thinking about the children and adolescents with emotional and behavioral health conditions who live at Parkridge Valley. The patients range from 5 to 17 years old and receive inpatient therapy to treat a range of psychiatric illnesses, such as PTSD and depression.
"That night, we had 87 kids, and for me there was no way we were going to be able to get our staff in the building and make sure those kids were taken care of, so we needed to start forming a plan," Bailey said.
As a nearby resident and longtime employee, Bailey knows the roads well.
She hopped in coworker Greg Partin's truck, and the group of three drove past Morning Pointe assisted living facility until downed trees forced them to stop in front of Drake Forest subdivision. There, they left the truck with a note and trekked through the dark toward the hospital, guided only by their flashlights.
"All you could see were trees," Bailey said, and the only sound was the alarm going off at Grace Academy - where her kids go to school. "I shined the light over there and saw that most of the campus was completely gone."
Climbing over power poles, under lines and over trees, the three made it to the roundabout before being forced to head down Jenkins Road to find a clear spot to cross back toward the gas station on Shallowford.
Around 4 a.m., Bailey called her supervisor, Nancy Toth, associate chief nursing officer at Parkridge Valley.
"I called her and said, 'I'm really not being dramatic right now, but this definitely has been a tornado. I can't see everything, but it's very, very bad,'" Bailey said.
In the hours before, Toth watched the weather on TV. She was following the storm along with the hospital's night staff. They tracked the storm and knew that it was time to wake up the sleeping residents.
"We were trying to decide whether we needed to get them up and out in the hall, how much of the threat of a tornado was this," Toth said. "When it touched down, I said, 'Get them all up, get them all up and in the halls.'"
The facility lost power but has an emergency generator, and the kids went back to sleep.
Bailey finally made it to work by 4:15 a.m.
"It was very eerie, with only the light of our flashlight. You don't know what you're walking into, and there's no sounds - so we turn the corner and breathe a sigh of relief hearing the generator," Bailey said. "There was debris, but we're just so blessed that the hospital did not suffer major damage, especially after seeing what we saw on our walk in."
Staff photo by Troy Stolt / Parkridge Valley Child and Adolescent campus nurse manager Hallie Bailey and her colleague Greg Partin stand for a portrait at the BP station located at the corner of Jenkins and Shallowford Road on Monday, April 27, 2020 in East Brainerd, Tenn. On March 13, just hours after an EF3 tornado tore through East Brainerd, Bailey and Partin walked a mile and a half through wreckage from The Lantern at Morning Pointe Alzheimer's Center of Excellence Chattanooga to Parkridge Valley Child and Adolescent campus because roads were shut down. The commute normally takes Bailey eight minutes.With the information from Bailey's scouting, Toth started calling other employees.
"Hallie had given us such a road map of how to get here that people were able to make it," Toth said, adding that nearly all the staff was able to get to work thanks to the direction from Bailey and the others who paved the way.
"With that, our kids woke up with people they knew. They saw faces they always saw. Even though we didn't have power, we had cereal and Pop-Tarts, so they had breakfast and no idea they were in the middle of this devastation," Toth said.
Parkridge was able to maintain its normal programming, which Toth said is important for the residents.
"We know that consistency and stability are what our kids are most sensitive to, and so I think that had a lot to do with the motivation that we have to get to them," she said. "Without that, it can be very, very, very disruptive, very hurtful to them. Some of them have lived through horrible trauma, and it just reminds them that they're not safe, so our goal is always to maintain safety as No. 1.
"Our social workers got in here and used their phones to get on the phones and call all these families to say their kids are OK."
Bailey said although she helped pave the way, the entire staff stepped up without hesitation.
"We're here to take care of these kids," she said, "and that's what we did."
Contact Elizabeth Fite at efite@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6673.