NASHVILLE, Tennessee — At least 24 people have been killed after tornadoes tore through middle Tennessee early Tuesday.
According to authorities, the deaths happened in at least four counties.
Joe Pasquale, a Minnesota native, has lived in Tennessee for the past 15 years. His neighborhood in Brentwood, a suburb of Nashville, is fine. But other communities, like East Nashville, got hit hard. According to the National Weather Service, an EF-3 tornado hit the Five Points area of East Nashville.
"East Nashville would be sort of like your Uptown area," Pasquale explained. "You know how in the Uptown area you'll have a yard, and then you'll have an alley, and then you'll have another yard? Trees are down in the area where the alley is. So that's also where all your power lines are. That's how people get in and out with their cars and everything. Those areas are just gone."
Pasquale said many of his friends have been impacted.
"I saw a post from one of my friends and she said that she woke up this morning and her ringer was off on her phone and she got up and realized that all of the houses on her street were gone," Pasquale said.
More than 20 students from Concordia College in Moorhead are visiting the Nashville area to build homes with Habitat For Humanity. They arrived Sunday morning.
"I heard because of family members from Minnesota who kept frantically texting me asking, 'Are you okay? Are you okay?' Because where we're staying we don't get a lot of service," said Abby Vogeler, a freshman at Concordia.
They're about a 40-minute drive away from Nashville, staying in Franklin. They only experienced thunderstorms in their area but the wet weather forced Habitat for Humanity to cancel building for the day. Their building site is about a month behind schedule because of the weather.
Students expect to be building again tomorrow. They plan on visiting Nashville Wednesday night and on Friday.
"The families of the people who were injured and the people who passed away... my thoughts are with them," said Lexi Smith, also a freshman at Concordia. "People here seem pretty tight-knit so I hope that the community is able to work together to rebuild."