Tennessee residents clean up after severe weekend storms killed 6 people and damaged neighborhoods

NASHVILLE, Tennessee (AP) — Central Tennessee residents and emergency workers cleaned up Sunday from severe weekend storms and tornadoes that killed six people and sent more to the hospital while damaging buildings, turning over vehicles and knocking out power to tens of thousands.

Officials confirmed that three people, including a toddler, died after a tornado struck Montgomery County 50 miles (80 kilometres) northwest of Nashville near the Kentucky state line on Saturday afternoon. Some 23 people were treated for injuries at hospitals in the county, officials said in a news release.

In a neighbourhood just north of downtown Nashville, three people were killed Saturday as a result of tornadoes, the city's Emergency Operation Center said in a social media post.

National Weather Service meteorologists said in a posting on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, said the destructive tornadoes were spawned in the Clarksville and Nashville areas.

In Nashville, the roof of a church north of downtown collapsed during the storm, resulting in 13 people being treated at hospitals, Nashville emergency officials said in a news release. They were later listed in stable condition.

Photos posted by the Clarksville fire department on social media showed damaged houses with debris strewn in the lawns, a tractor-trailer flipped on its side on a highway and insulation ripped out of building walls. Video footage from the Tennessee storms showed a ball of fire rising from behind a row of homes into the sky.

A curfew was in effect both Saturday night and Sunday night in Clarksville, where officials on Sunday urged motorists to keep away from the damaged areas so as not to impede the work of first responders and utility crews.

At least six tornado tracks were reported Saturday in central Tennessee, according to the National Weather Service. Agency meteorologist Cory Mueller in Nashville said it was sending out tornado tracking teams on Sunday to attempt to confirm these potential tornadoes and calculate their severity.

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