‘My heart just immediately sank’: Madison woman reflects on learning her home was destroyed in tornado while she was ‘200 miles away’
MADISON, Tenn. (WKRN) — When an EF-2 tornado bulldozed her home in Madison on Saturday, Dec. 9, Abigail Wells was in Pigeon Forge more than 200 miles away.
“I was with my boyfriend and one of my best friends,” she told News 2. “One of my other best friends texted me a picture of the house and said, ‘Hey, if you haven’t checked in with your dad, you probably should!'”
Wells and her father lived in an East Campbell Road home – right in the path of the deadly tornado that claimed three lives in the northern suburb of Nashville and across the street from the Nashville Electric Service North substation that exploded during the storms.
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While she and her boyfriend had both received emergency alert messages from their schools, she said she had no idea the storms destroyed so much of her home. “We didn’t think it was going to spawn multiple tornadoes in the whole state.”
Her first call was to her father, who rode out the storm from their living room.
“I asked him, ‘Are you okay?’ And he just said, ‘The house is gone,'” Wells said. “My heart just immediately sank.”
But her father told her not to worry about him or the house, because there was “nothing we could do” about the damage sustained. Once she confirmed her father was alright, worry then spread to that of her pets, Sandy, Tadashi, and Shimmer.
“I didn’t even really process until the next day, ‘Hey, are my pets okay?'” she said. “Sandy I’ve had for as long as I can remember, and I’m 18. He’s an older cat, and I was worried about him, especially.”
She posted in a local lost pets Facebook group asking about her animals, asking for anyone’s help in locating her cat and two dogs.
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“If anyone finds them, I was the yellow house across from the substation that blew,” she said she posted. “Any help, even if we find them and they’re not okay, I just want to know if they made it.”
Abigail ended up being tagged in more social media posts relating to Ricky Sessum’s video post about locating her cat, Sandy. In the aftermath of the storms, Sandy was found curled up on a piece of bedding directly in front of the rubble of Wells’ home. He was picked up by a Good Samaritan, Erica Williams, and held at a local veterinary clinic until Wells could return home Monday afternoon.
“Someone on the Facebook linked me to a post that has a rescuer that was holding my cat,” she said. “I was like, ‘That’s Sandy!’ I immediately responded that it was my cat. I was really relieved. I was glad that, at the very least, he was okay at the moment and someone was going to take care of him until I could get to him.”
She was able to pick up Sandy from the Livewell Animal Urgent Clinic Monday night with plenty of medicine for a flea infestation and some ear mite cleaner, which he has been taking well, Abigail said.
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“He’s doing pretty good,” she said. “I’m very grateful that my dad and my animals are okay. I was really worried about everyone, especially because I was 200 miles away, give or take. I was really distressed that I was so far away when all of this happened.”
Picking him up on Monday night, Wells said she was glad to have him back in her arms and feel and hear him purring again.
“He purrs really, really loud, and it wasn’t too long that I was holding him that he was purring at his typical volume,” she said.
Wells has since received confirmation that her dogs Tadashi and Shimmer are okay, though she hasn’t yet been able to pick them up.
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