Out of his control

Police officer, accustomed to helping others, learns to be the "helpee"

By Craig Boerner

Vanderbilt Police Officer David Carey is accustomed to helping others through his job, but on April 7 he became a person in need of assistance when a tornado ripped through his Charlotte, Tenn., home with three family members inside.
Trained to protect the public, and respond to virtually any crisis, his gun and badge were useless against multiple tornadoes that decimated several houses while killing 12 persons and injuring 181 others statewide.
Carey, 34, was off work when he received a call from his nephew that a tornado warning had been issued for the area near his home, which he shared with sister Regina Landis, brother-in-law Jeff Landis, and their children Charles, 16, and Amber, 12.
He was near Ashland City at that time, and said he was on his way home.
“Then my other sister called and said, ‘The house was hit and Regina and the kids were in it and everything is gone,’” he said.
“I don’t even remember driving after that, it hit me like a ton of bricks.”
Carey lost everything he had in a matter of 10 seconds.
“I am so used to having control, and I am so used to taking care of everybody else,” he said.
“When this came through I got this sense of helplessness … it’s totally out of your control. It is a sinking feeling, it’s like I was drowning.”
The tornado blew a trailer from across the street into the house, sucked another trailer from behind the house into their pool, and picked up their house, broke it in half, and spun it—making the back door and the front door face each other, he said.
Regina and the children were inside when the tornado hit but survived after being rushed to the hospital and receiving “a couple hundred” stitches and staples collectively.
“My sister went to the front door and opened it and saw the trailer from across the street coming toward our house. She said she had enough time to slam the door and say, ‘Get in the …’ and that was it,” Carey said.
The family quickly huddled in the living room as the tornado approached, with mother holding the hands of her children.
“My sister woke up in what used to be her bedroom; my niece woke up with the big screen and two filing cabinets
on top of her; and my nephew woke up out in the yard,” Carey said.
Jeff Landis, a Cheatham County Sheriff’s Deputy who had left for work before the tornado hit, went directly to the hospital to be with his wife and children; Carey stayed with the house “to keep what little bit we did have safe.”
“When I got there the ambulance was just taking them away to the hospital and by then I knew that they were going to be OK,” he said.
His police training kicked in as he set up incident command around the house.
The tornado had demolished a total of five buildings in the backyard as well, including a four-wheeler shed and his brother-in-law’s business.
“We found a couple of computer hard drives and people would bring those to me and we put them in my car because that is all of our identities, everything about us,” Carey said.
“It was just small things like that; I just resorted back to my training. And then when I would go home at night that was when I could sit down and cry and thank God for my family, things like that.”
There were a couple of bright spots despite the tornado damage.
“We could not find our dalmatian,” we knew that he was in his dog house in front of the house when the tornado hit, but we couldn’t find the dog house or anything,” Carey said.
“The next morning, when the Weather Channel was there doing their broadcast, we heard some movement in the debris and Chip just sprung out. He had been there the whole night.”
Carey had been keeping Chip’s blue rubber ball in his pocket, hoping to find him.
“It took him about five minutes to get his bearings,” he said. “Then he started sniffing around and I threw his ball and he went and got it and brought it back to me. I said, ‘Chip’s fine.’”
He also found a gold chain and pendant that read “#1 Mom,” which he later returned to its owner, his sister.
“Three days later we were getting ready to go to church and she said, ‘All of my jewelry is gone,’” Carey said.
“I gave her the necklace and she just broke down. Her kids had gotten that for her and it was really and truly the only piece of jewelry that she wanted back.”
Help also came from a Cheatham County police officer who took his house off the market temporarily and asked the family to stay there until they got back on their feet.
Carey now has an apartment in Nashville and his sister and brother-in-law have closed on a new house.
They are picking up the pieces—literally—and what has been found is just as important as what was lost.
“We were picking things up, it could be a little trinket that we had in the cabinet that we passed 100 times a day and wouldn’t have given it a second look,” he said. “But now it means something more to us.”