Tornado Hits Nashville, At Least 19 Killed Statewide
BOLDUAN: Back to the breaking news out of Tennessee. The death toll this morning from the severe storm system that struck overnight jumping to 19 people. 19 people killed and at least 14 of those killed were in Putnam County, about 80 miles east of Nashville. You can see the devastation and the images that have been coming in all morning. Let's get the very latest. Joining me right now is Chief William Swann. He's a Director of the National Office of Fire and Emergency Management. Chief SWANN, can you hear me?</s>WILLIAM SWANN, DIRECTOR, NASHVILLE OFFICE OF FIRE AND EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT: I can.</s>BOLDUAN: Thank you very much for jumping on. I appreciate it. The latest we've heard is that that the death toll has rose to 19 this morning. Is that the latest or do you expect it to rise more?</s>SWANN: Well, and let me be clear that 19 is throughout the State of Tennessee to where our head count right now is. Davidson County, we've got two confirmed personnel that lost their lives. And we have one critical. But at this moment, we're still actually -- we're still actually making assessments, urban search and rescue teams are going into highly debrised area, where a lot of damage was done to make door-to-door assessments. We did aerial view and mapped out where the devastation and the line of the tornado went through. So we're still making assessments. But Davidson County, in my area, my county, we have a two confirmed.</s>BOLDUAN: From what you're hearing coordination with all of the other emergency management across the state, what is the status of search and rescue? I can only imagine with the devastation that I'm seeing just from images coming in that you're in the beginnings of it, not the end.</s>SWANN: Absolutely. And once the storm actually hit, we immediately had our teams out trying to make -- we operate off of the LIC (ph) method, which is life safety, infinite stabilization and proper constipation (ph) and we do it in that order. So once the storm initially hit in, it was dark, we -- early hours of the morning, it was just really trying to get people that we knew that was trapped out of these harm's way and then put a temporary shelter in place. Now, that we're getting a little bit of more arms wrapped around of the actual damage, we can make a little bit more assessment of what areas that we need to really concentrate on, make sure we have shelters in place for people that, of course, don't have a place to stay. It's a long process but one that takes a collective effort from everybody in the city. We've activated our Office of Emergency Management, which is the EOC, and we have all the parties here to be able to collectively together make a sound decision in order to make the city still be able to go on as a daily journey. Of course, today is voting day, so we got a lot of things that we're sort of challenged against. But, again, we're just working harder to keep everybody safe and still move forward.</s>BOLDUAN: Yes. I mean, what is your message to folks in your county and beyond right now when they're looking at this kind of devastation, they're dealing with devastation maybe in their own home and in their own family? We're talking about Election Day. I mean, what's your message to folks right now?</s>SWANN: Well, our message is pretty simple. I mean, if you're at home and, it's a safe environment, that's where you need to stay. We know our local state and nonessential personnel even for metropolitan government, they have a day off, and others, if you have to go to work or just to make sure that you check the -- your path of entry in and out of the city. Because at this point, we have so much debris, power outages and, of course, we have a lot of downed trees, downed power lines, and then we have a lot of people who want to volunteer. So we're trying to establish and we do have those outlets where people can volunteer their time in a collective effort in more of a structured way to go out into the communities and actually help move debris. We just don't want anyone doing it independently. Again, we've got these things established through our city. We're actually putting it out on all the social media outlets and the local news where they can call in to actually volunteer their time, because it is much needed.</s>BOLDUAN: Do you fear that the death toll is going to rise? It stands in your counting at two. But do you fear that it's it is going to go up?</s>SWANN: Well, I'm an optimistic type person. I'm praying and hoping that it doesn't. But, again, we're just making those assessments as time -- as we speak right now. So we just got through the aerial view to get a bird's-eye view of our county, we're actually putting the map together now. We got teams that is going to be going out to certain areas that we know that maybe there was no communication where there may be somebody trapped or displaced. So we're just going to hope that the number doesn't increase. But, again, we're just hoping that with everybody's effort and working as one unit, we'll be able to make this a little bit more fluid.</s>BOLDUAN: Yes, Director, thank you for jumping on and really appreciate the time in such a busy day for you. I really appreciate it.</s>SWANN: All right, thank you.</s>BOLDUAN: Thank you so much. We'll be right back.