For Lindsey Landreneau, the first warning sign was when the wind began to increase and her ears began to pop. For Dakota Tracy it was when sheets of aluminum roofing began to blow across the road in front of his truck as he hauled cattle to slaughter. And for Brittany Sampson, it was when the sky quickly turned a sickly yellow-green that she knew she needed to run for cover. Fortunately none of the nearly two dozen Georgia Baptist resident students at the Tennessee Baptist university were injured as their dorms collapsed on top of them. But they all agree that it was only the grace of God that saved them from being crushed under tons of debris following the Feb. 5 storm.

 

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JACKSON, Tenn. —

Ninety seconds of sheer terror. That’s how Georgia Baptist students attending Union University described living through the worst natural disaster to strike a Southern Baptist college or university in history.

Repairs may come close to the $50 million damage caused by floodwaters that swept across the campus of New Orleans Seminary in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in August 2005.

Students at Union had only seconds to run for their lives before the F4 tornado began to shred their dormitories on Feb. 5. When the storm subsided nearly 80 percent of campus housing was destroyed or severely damaged.

The Union tornado was one of a band of deadly storms that struck Tennessee overnight killing 32 people. Twisters also inflicted substantial damage in Arkansas and Kentucky.

 

Chaos and calm

The early warnings were brushed off by many as typical hyperbole generated by newscasters and weather prognosticators. Many such warnings of past years failed to produce a storm of any magnitude.

“Shoot, this isn’t anything,” is what Dakota Tracy of Snellville was thinking shortly before the storm turned violent.

“The weather and news reports we were listening to said we would have 45 minutes of warning if the storm ever began to move our way. That’s why I left campus to help my uncle take a load of cattle to the slaughterhouse,” he said as looked over the acres of destruction.

“I had just gotten about a mile from the campus when the sky turned black, hail started pouring down, and I was caught in the strongest downpour of my life. I could hardly see to keep the truck on the road, and pieces of trees and houses were blowing across my path.

“I was scared to death and tried to outrun the storm, but then it stopped as fast as it began. It just disappeared into the night and left a quiet, eerie calm.”

David Quick of Newnan, whose father Gerald serves as men’s ministry director at First Baptist Church, was first on the scene to help pull fellow students from the rubble.

“After the storm passed it was just like a scene out of the movies. People were running around in the pouring rain, stunned and disoriented. Sirens were wailing and there was a strong scent of gas everywhere you turned.

“The ambulances couldn’t get close enough so several of my friends and I helped move rubble so the workers could get closer to those trapped in the buildings,” he said.

Quick, like Tracy, didn’t take the storm warning seriously. But the first sign that things were not right was when baseball-sized hail started falling from the sky. Then lightening and thunder began shaking the ground and transformers began exploding all around the campus.

He and his friends ran for cover into their rooms. When they walked back outside the dormitory was still standing but was structurally damaged .

The lesson he said he will always remember is the power of God as shown through the raw force of nature.

 

Destruction, but no death

“He showed us that He was in complete control that night. That tornado dropped right down on the dorms in the most heavily populated section of the campus, did major damage, and not one person died. It didn’t touch the empty sports fields but inflicted as much damage as it could to the housing without one person losing their life,” he says.

Quick’s father, who drove to Jackson immediately after the tragedy, shared that observation.

“The campus looked like a bomb had exploded in the middle of the student housing. Some dorms were totally destroyed; others were severely damaged with walls lying on the ground. Mattresses were hanging out of windows where the wind had almost pulled them into the street.

“The students were incredibly fortunate with all the bricks flying through the air that night. One brick could have taken a life in seconds, even if someone were hiding inside. We are so thankful that David’s life and those of his classmates were saved.”

 

Shredded walls

Angela Abbamonte remembers a strange question asked by one of the girls who took refuge in her apartment’s bathroom – a “safe room” where students were urged to hide due to the lack of windows and breaking glass.

“After the storm passed one of the girls asked ‘What are we doing in a room with a window?’ That’s when we looked around and discovered that the entire wall had been shredded by the wind and what we were seeing was the lightening from the storm,” she said.

 

New plans

Officials credit the miracle of no loss of life to the emergency plan that had been put in place under the administration of president David Dockery. The school had been hit twice by tornadoes in 2001 and 2002 but never on the scale of this month’s disaster.

Classes, which were suspended for two weeks, resumed on Feb. 20 following an evening worship service the previous evening. The college has already announced plans to begin construction on new housing with occupancy set for Sept. 1.

Union University, founded in 1825, is the oldest educational institution in the Southern Baptist Convention. A four-year liberal arts university owned and operated by the Tennessee Baptist Convention, Union is located in Jackson, Tenn., midway between Memphis and Nashville. It has a 3,000-member student body.

 

Related stories: SBC president calls for Union offering Finding peace in the storm Georgia Baptist colleges revisit preparations for inclement weather