Is it legal to native right there?
We was behind that.
See everything blown away
except this one little section.
And this is where we were.
Ruth Montgomery opens this
box several times a year.
All with images and words
written about April 27th, 2011.
Horrible when we came out of
our closet and looked out,
everything was going.
Everything, trees everything
just laying in the streets,
you know we we didn't know what to think.
It was a Wednesday evening in
the town of Ringgold when an
E F4 move through the
heart of Catoosa County,
the landscape and buildings forever changed.
Current Emergency Management director
Steve Quinn remembers the moments
following in slow motion. The braid.
For 1:40 then he was a Battalion
Chief firefighter at Catoosa Station,
one in Ringgold,
and saw the wedge shaped tornado
closing in when the tornado
come over us. I got on the radio and say,
you know, produces Battalion Three.
We have a confirmed tornado, you know.
Go ahead and start sending help.
Quinn and his team made it four
blocks before down trees and power
lines blocked every road to help.
They had to hike all these homes.
Here they were all here.
Also one foot City Council
member Randall Franks,
with the town's emergency response team, I
could have never imagined how
surreal it was to walk the streets
to go through these yards.
Every power pole, every tree
down former City Council member
Ray Mcclanahan didn't survive.
He was downtown in his
home when the tornado hit.
Somehow hundreds of people
sheltering in restaurants and
gas stations right off the main
Interstate exit escaped alive.
If there was
ever a time when God took his hand
and put it over to protect people,
it was right here because we were
anticipating that there would be hundreds
of fatalities along that corridor.
Because these restaurants were gone,
all that was still standing on some
of them were simply the coolers.
The tornado strengthened as
it passed East of the downtown
area and into Cherokee Valley,
claiming an additional 7 lives before
reaching Tennessee and the name Damage
Path buildings were unrecognizable.
The tornado took trees and shredded
them like a pencil sharpener,
wrapped metal scraps around power
poles like flimsy pieces of tinfoil.
Ruth Montgomery's house was
one of nearly 700 buildings,
either damaged or destroyed.
We made, I said no. I'm not mad
and they said why you not crying.
I said I'm alive that's why I'm not crying.
Ruth Montgomery's house may have
been destroyed along with her church
Mount Area Baptist, which is just
a few doors down.
But even though the building was
destroyed when Sunday rolled around,
it didn't matter.
Yeah, we really celebrated.
We had all races and some
from near and something from.
How far in we would just blessed
with that service at that time
so you know you think the losses
where two or three are gathered
together touching in a green?
I'd be in the mist so he was
there that day and we felt the
Spirit Christian Aid Ministries
the Mennonites and Amish all brought
volunteers with help from FEMA GMA
an one another most of Ringgold.
Rebuilt Catoosa counties,
Coade Community Relief Organization
raised over $500,000 to
assist more than 160 families.
To find a new normal
but ten years later, there are still
several empty lots and concrete slabs
littered throughout Ringgold waiting for
the next visionary to join the community.