Tennessee Tornadoes

Floor Speech

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Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. President, as I begin my remarks today, I express my thanks to my colleagues here in this Chamber and, certainly, all across Capitol Hill who have extended their thoughts and their prayers and have asked ``How are you doing?'' when it comes to talking about Tennessee and our citizens and those who have been so adversely impacted by the tornadoes this week.

The damage is absolutely indescribable. Even though, on early Tuesday morning, when the news broke and I started watching some of the local TV stations that had put drones up there around Nashville and Putnam County and over in Wilson County, I could not appreciate the extent of this damage until I walked these neighborhoods. That is something I did yesterday.

You can see the damage. Communities are now debris fields. It is just indescribable the power of this storm--an F-2, an F-3, and an F-4. These tornadoes ripped through Tennessee--through Carroll County, Gibson County, Humphreys County, Benton County, Davidson County, Wilson County, and Putnam County. The damage that they have seen on the ground is sometimes for 50 miles. It is just absolutely indescribable.

What we have seen are many families who have been left homeless. Their homes are now piles of rubble. We have seen over 100,000 Tennesseans initially without electricity, but because of the good work of the TVA, which is the power generator, and our local power distributors, we have that number worked down to 23,550. So that is beginning to improve, and the lights are, indeed, coming back on. Yet the damage is still there and the loss of property. It is going to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Those estimates are beginning to take place, but there is a lot of work to do.

The loss of life is, indeed, the most tender as 24 individuals have lost their lives--18 in Putnam County. We have children who have lost their lives. We have dozens who have been injured and who have been hospitalized. We still have some individuals who are unaccounted for and are missing. So there is a long way back to normalcy as we look at this situation.

I will tell you that I give a lot of credit to our Governor and the leadership that he has shown as we have worked through this. He did get a formal request submitted to FEMA today. He has asked for President Trump to issue a major disaster declaration. This is going to include individual assistance for Davidson, Putnam, and Wilson Counties; public assistance for Benton, Carroll, Davidson, Gibson, Putnam, and Wilson Counties; and hazard mitigation statewide. He has also requested Small Business Administration loans for several counties.

This is catastrophic damage. As our teams worked together to assess the situation and as I worked yesterday with our State's insurance commissioner; with Director Sheehan of TEMA, the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency; with General Holmes, our Adjutant General for the National Guard; and FEMA, with its regional Director, one of the things that was so significant was that the debris field went on for miles and miles and miles outside of the areas that were hit. So we know this is going to take a little while.

I do have some information that I want to share. The Tennessee Emergency Management Agency has taken the lead in organizing the shelters and the command centers on the ground in order to get this information out to individuals in the State and to the individuals around the country who have family who live in these areas.

There are three contact points that I want to bring attention to: the home and property cleanup hotline, the statewide crisis phone line, and then, for individuals who are trying to figure out how to access help for recovery, the website TN.gov/TEMA. There is a resource directory-- an aggregation--of where to go to find help and information.

The crisis phone line is a mental health phone line because the impact of this kind of tragedy just cannot be understated.

So, as I said, two important phone numbers--one can help you if you need emergency cleanup, and another will connect you to trained mental health professionals. Individuals should be encouraged to call if they have need there.

On the website, you will find shelter locations, emergency accommodations and transportation, and just some practical information on that cleanup and then kind of next steps as you go about filing claims and rebuilding.

So we do look forward to individuals having access to this information and using it because we know that we want to be there and help them to recover during this terrible time.

Tennessee is a State that is known for its volunteer spirit, and as you look through some of the social media posts that were coming out during this storm and after the storm and you see the horror of what was transpiring with the tornadoes, you also see hope, and you see how the elected officials--those local officials in these communities--have stepped up and have taken the lead. Our mayors and our sheriffs are to be commended for the work they are doing and also our emergency response personnel, all of our first responders, for the way they have shown up and they have worked through. Some of them worked through 36, 40 hours without a break in order to respond to this.

I was at the State Emergency Operations Center, and in Tennessee we have, at our National Guard facility, the TEMA response facility, and individuals would be so encouraged to see this working because you have representatives from the highway patrol and from the TBI and from the Red Cross and from so many different State agencies, and they are working there together to meet the needs of Tennesseans.

On Tuesday evening, when I landed, I went straight over to the operations center, and there was one gentleman, and he had his puppy there. So of course that was the first thing I wanted to do, was meet his pet. He was there working with him. And I found out that this employee, Brandon Ward, actually had slept on a cot there at the facility because he had lost his home. So what did he do? The storm hits. His home gets hit. He heads over to work. He has his pet with him. He was staying there, helping others even though he had experienced loss.

We were at a shelter, and there was a nurse, a paramedic, who was there, and I found out she was from Bowling Green, KY. I asked why she had chosen to come. She said: We knew you needed help. So she came from Bowling Green to fill in until someone could get there and handle a shift. Helping people. Meeting their needs.

We have seen Tennesseans by the thousands show up. Big smiles. They have got water. They have got food. They have brought along chainsaws and tractors and bulldozers and four wheelers--everything needed to clear these debris fields, to move into these communities where houses once stood, and to help these individuals who are seeking to push forward in rebuilding their lives, cleaning up the damage that has been left by this storm, sifting through what was once their home and finding those precious mementos. That is what is happening in Tennessee this week.

We know this is going to be a long road back, but we also know we are getting special attention with FEMA being on the ground.

Tomorrow, we are going to welcome President Trump to the State, and he will be able to see firsthand what has happened by an unprecedented storm that swept through this State on the ground for 50 miles--an F-4 tornado--and he is also going to see Tennesseans working together.

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