Tennesseans are cleaning up after fierce weekend storms killed six people and damaged neighborhoods

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Central Tennessee residents and emergency responders on Sunday cleaned up from severe weekend storms and tornadoes that killed six people and sent even more to the hospital, while damaging buildings, flipping vehicles and knocking out power to tens of thousands.

Officials confirmed that three people, including a toddler, were killed after a tornado struck Montgomery County, 50 miles (80 kilometers) northwest of Nashville, near the Kentucky state line, on Saturday afternoon. About 23 people were treated for injuries at hospitals across the county, officials said in a news release.

Three people were killed by tornadoes in a neighborhood just north of downtown Nashville on Saturday, the city's Emergency Operation Center said in a social media post.

National Weather Service meteorologists said in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, that the destructive tornadoes were spawned in the Clarksville and Nashville areas.

In Nashville, the roof of a church north of downtown collapsed during the storm, leaving 13 people treated in hospitals, Nashville emergency officials said in a news release. They were later listed in stable condition.

Photos posted to social media by the Clarksville Fire Department show damaged homes with debris scattered across lawns, a tractor-trailer overturned on its side on a highway and insulation torn from the walls of buildings. Video footage of the storms in Tennessee showed a fireball rising into the sky from behind a row of homes.

A curfew was in effect both Saturday evening and Sunday evening in Clarksville, where officials on Sunday urged motorists to stay away from the damaged areas so as not to impede the work of first responders and utility workers.

“We pray for those who have been injured, lost loved ones and lost their homes,” Montgomery County Mayor Wes Golden said in a news release. “This community works together like no other and we will be here until the end.”

Residents in the region are familiar with severe weather in late fall. Saturday's storm came nearly two years after the National Weather Service recorded 41 tornadoes across a handful of states, including 16 in Tennessee and eight in Kentucky. A total of 81 people died in Kentucky alone.

Metropolitan Nashville police identified the victims killed north of downtown as Joseph Dalton, 37; Floridema Gabriel Perez, 31; and her son, Anthony Elmer Mendez, 2. Dalton was in his mobile home when the storm threw him on top of Perez's home. Two other children, one in each home, were taken to a hospital with injuries that were not life-threatening, the department said in a statement.

Montgomery County and Clarksville officials did not immediately respond to requests for information about the three deaths in their areas and the injuries early Sunday.

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee said he and his wife Maria were praying for all Tennesseans affected by the storms.

“We mourn the lives lost and ask that everyone continue to follow the guidelines of local and state officials,” Lee said in a statement.

According to PowerOutage.us. About 45,000 electricity customers were without power in Tennessee early Sunday, down from more than 80,000 on Saturday evening.

The National Weather Service issued multiple tornado warnings in Tennessee on Saturday and said it plans to investigate an area where an apparent tornado struck in Kentucky.

The Montgomery County Sheriff's Office said a tornado touched down Saturday around 2 p.m.

Shanika Washington said that as soon as she heard the storm sirens going off in her Clarksville neighborhood, she took her children, ages 5 and 10, into a windowless bathroom in the basement of her townhouse. During their twenty harrowing minutes in the bathroom, Washington hovered over her children like a protective shield.

“The back door actually flew open and you just heard a lot of wind,” she said. “The blinds and everything were shaking a lot. I could tell we were in the middle of a storm.

When she came out of the bathroom, she looked out a window and saw the devastation: debris flying onto cars with their windows broken. Shutters torn off houses. Some roofs were ripped off mansions. Air conditioning units and backyard barbecues were discarded like toys, and wooden partitions between townhouses were missing.

Because the power was out in the area, Washington took her children to a hotel for the night.

“I'm still trying to process it all a little bit,” she said.

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Associated Press writer Gary D. Robertson in Raleigh, N.C., contributed to this report.