Reed Arnold was watching TV on Saturday at his home in Clarksville, Tenn., when he saw a warning on his phone. He stepped outside and filmed the swiftly moving clouds and a looming tornado. Minutes later, the twister hit his neighborhood.
“One second you are sitting in your house, and all of a sudden, all this carnage happens,” he said.
A sober mood gripped Clarksville and other communities in Middle Tennessee on Sunday as crews searched for survivors and officials surveyed the damage from severe storms and tornadoes that killed at least six people in the region and injured more than 60.
The storms and tornadoes, part of a broader stretch of severe weather that swept across the South on Saturday, left a swath of destruction that included parts of Clarksville, near the Kentucky border, where three people died, and communities around Nashville, where three others were killed.
On Sunday, Clarksville, Nashville and other Tennessee cities and towns were working to clear away debris from a landscape where pink installation clung to tree limbs, children’s toys lay crumpled and flags had been shredded to ribbons
“It’s really difficult to watch what has happened, to talk to the victims, to be on the ground,” said Gov. Bill Lee at a news conference in Madison, after touring damage from the storm. Mr. Lee, who declared a state of emergency on Sunday, said the state had begun the formal process of seeking disaster aid from the federal government.
Directing his comments to those most affected by the storm, Mr. Lee said, “While we cannot erase the pain and the difficulty and the heartbreak of what’s happened to you, we can come alongside you.”
Officials in Montgomery County, which includes Clarksville, said that two adults and one child had died as a result of a tornado. Officials were conducting secondary searches and preparing for the next phase of recovery.
Jimmie Edwards, chief of Montgomery County Emergency Services, said that 62 injured people had been taken…