Journalistic Dialogue. The Event Used

¶ … journalistic dialogue. The event used to complete this paper is a tornado that ripped through Gallatin, TN and made national news for its damage and devastation including the deaths of 12 residents. There were two sources used to complete this paper. It is written as if the author of this paper witnessed the event first hand.

TWISTER DESTROYS GALLATIN'S BUILDINGS but NOT it'S SPIRIT

The morning had called for storms. Residents in Middle Tennessee were used to storms, in fact some joked that the Tornado Alley had recently moved to include that region. For several years there had been storms in which Doppler Radar had detected tornadoes in the sky and issued alerts for the area, however, they rarely if ever touched down. Perhaps the worst that happened was a tail whipped out of the sky and damaged a few roofs before retreating back into the clouds. On April 7, 2006 however, the world of those who lived in Gallatin was forever changed, when a tornado not only touched down, but waltzed across the city as if competing in a final dance competition. When it was finally over, people were dead, businesses were destroyed, a college was leveled and homes were completely demolished.

Throughout the day, residents kept "an eye to the sky" as they are told to do when severe weather threatens. They had been through it so many times before that it was almost second nature, but because nothing really serious had ever come of the warnings, many people also went about their daily business with their radios turned to low.

My adult son was at a grocery store when we got the word at work there was a twister on the ground and headed this way," said Candace Webb. "He was on the phone with me and told me he as in the parking lot of a store and saw it hit the college across the street. I begged him to get into the building and the phones went dead."

Webb later found her son. The tornado had leveled parts of the community college, headed straight for the store her son was in but for inexplicable reasons it jumped left, destroyed a glass car dealership and then whipped back behind the store and continued its path of death and destruction.

When it got to a subdivision with million dollar, three story homes, it didn't hesitate to choose its target.

I was in the basement," said Elmer. "It took my house down but I survived. John wasn't so lucky."

John was the resident across the street, who was found clutching his wife in one arm, their poodle in the other in the basement of the home where they died.

The tornado touched down south of town and continued along the ground swallowing all that it saw in its path.

I was out in my yard," said Steve Hutter. "I heard a freight train and thought, 'Hmmm, we don't have tracks near here,'. Then I remembered what they said about a tornado sounding like an oncoming train and I turned and saw it bearing down on my street."

Hutter barely had enough time to race into the house, throw himself on the bathroom floor and hug the toilet before it hit the house.

A looked up and saw the sky racing past me," said Hutter. The tornado had ripped the roof off of his house and he was being tossed across the street within the house at about 250 miles per hour.

I was praying God every second not to take me now," said Hutter. When the house came to a stop it was in the neighbor's yard but Hutter was alive.

The debris-strewn scene from the Woodhaven neighborhood in a populous area just outside Gallatin took many tornado experts by surprise. Often the way deadly storms turn out has more to do with human readiness than nature's atmospheric fault-lines, experts say. "Tornadoes shift around just enough so that the society, the people, get relaxed," says meteorologist Tom Grazulis, director of the Tornado Project in St. Johnsbury, Vt."

As the tornado made its way through Gallatin, the city hit the emergency breakers and shut off the power to the entire town to protect it from fires and explosions. The only sound that could be heard was the wailing of tornado sirens and the scream of ambulance sirens racing to get to the areas most damaged.

My neighbor was killed," said Sarah Ratliff. "She and her 20-year-old son were hiding in a closet and the tornado sucked them out and they landed about a block away in a parking lot. The boy lived but his mother was killed."

When it was over, emergency crews could be seen going through the neighborhoods and placing large spray painted "X's" on the doors of houses that were deemed too dangerous to inhabit.

Nearly 170 homes and eight businesses in Gallatin were damaged or destroyed, said Sonny Briggance, rescue chief for the county's emergency management agency. Several multimillion-dollar homes were pulverized in one subdivision. "I'm amazed we didn't have more fatalities," Briggance said. "Although the number is high, we are still very lucky (Jonsson, 2006)."

When the tornado finally made its way back into the sky, people began to emerge from hiding places and survey the damage.

Parents frantically tried to dial school numbers to see if their children were alive but the phone lines were down and the cell phone lines were so jammed they failed to work for most people.