Billy Dyer, 64, was sitting in the living room of his home in Baxter, Tenn. with his wife, Kathy, around midnight on Monday night when he got an emergency alert on his phone about a tornado. His wife got the same alert shortly after him.
Dyer now believes these alerts likely saved their lives.
The two quickly went down to their basement to take shelter, and to watch the news for further updates. As soon as they sat down, Dyer tells TIME, “the top part of the house exploded.”
“It seemed like [the wind] went on for a long time, but it actually went by pretty quick,” Dyer said.
Parts of Tennessee were devastated this week by a series of tornadoes that hit multiple counties, including Putnam, Benton, Wilson and Davidson, which contains the city of Nashville. So far, officials have listed at least 24 fatalities, with many more people still missing.
It’s the deadliest tornado disaster in the U.S. this year; last year in Alabama, 23 people were killed by a tornado that hit Lee County.
Over 140 buildings were destroyed throughout impacted neighborhoods; fallen trees and debris was left scattered haphazardly. Power outages left over 50,000 homes without electricity.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has declared a state of emergency and multiple state and federal agencies — including the National Guard, the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency (TEMA) and county-level emergency services — have responded to the disaster.
Having toured the damage wrought across the state, Lee offered condolences to those affected, but also said he was very happy with recovery efforts happening across impacted areas, highlighting in particular residents who offered assistance to their neighbors.
“In the worst of circumstances, the best of people comes out and that’s what we’re seeing here in Tennessee,” Lee said at a press conference on Tuesday.
As the tornado hit, Dyer said his entire house shook. With the roof gone, their home began to flood. Most of his house is ruined.
“It hit so fast, a lot of folks didn’t have time to take shelter,” Putnam County Mayor Randy Porter said, according to the Associated Press. “Many of these folks were sleeping.” (At least 18 deaths have been reported in Putnam County, where Dyer lives.)
Dyer said that his daughter, Brooke, was in the house next door, where his parents had previously lived. After the storm passed he said he had to help her out of the remnants of the residence. “My mother and father’s house… It’s pretty much gone,” Dyer says. “It looks like some type of war zone.”
The next day Dyer and his neighbors began searching through the ruins, looking for anything they could keep. He praised the recovery efforts that have started in the neighborhood but, though he has lived in Tennessee for almost his entire life, he now says he’s unsure if he will remain in the state.
“I don’t know… it depends on how much work has to be done,” Dyer says. “My concern is that this won’t be the last tornado we experience if we stay.”
