Remembering The 27 Who Died In ’74 Tornado Outbreak

Wednesday marks the 50th anniversary of the nation’s second-largest tornado outbreak on record, storms that took the lives of 27 Upper Cumberland residents.

At least 11 different tornadoes touched down across the Upper Cumberland from April 3, 1974 into April 4. Storms struck every county but Clay and Van Buren. 275 homes were damaged and three people died in Overton County. 150 people were injured and seven died in Fentress County. Ten people died as a storm stayed on the ground some 28 miles around Cookeville.

Phillip Harris was three weeks into his career as a Putnam County Dispatcher. At 19 years old, Harris said he did not really pay attention to the news. As he began his shift at 4pm that day, he did not expect anything. That changed around 8pm.

“We got our first report in the Bangum area that a possible tornado touched down,” Harris said. “Of course, we’d never, or I’d never experienced anything like that, though. We started the wheels rolling there and then we kept getting more reports about Rocky Point, out in that area, Parker Grove, people were injured, a tornado hit, you know, seeing everything you got. Of course, back then, I think we had three emergency ambulance and a old hearse we used for an ambulance. So we called in our people, got them responding.”

Harris said the calls continued for several hours. He said the county had very little emergency infrastructure at that time.

“Bob Netherton, my boss, came in and helped, so there we had two people on the radio and telephone,” Harris said. “Back in those days, we had one phone, one radio, so we were extremely busy.”

Harris and Netherton activated the rescue squad. Local funeral homes provided ambulances. Tennessee Tech donated the use of a van. Cookeville General was put on alert, Harris remembers.

“The hospital and the nurses, doctors, they were all called in to help,” Harris said.

“Without the citizens, I think, we would have been a lot worse off,” Harris said. “But between the chainsaws and the rescue squad, Sam Smith, the sheriff’s department, police department, I mean, everybody just made one team, and one team got it done.”

Harris said in some ways, it probably helped that he was just weeks into a job that he would spend his lifetime doing. He did not know what he did not know that night.

And of course, there was not radar and tornado sirens or hyperactive television forecasters in 1974.

“I had no idea what was coming,” Harris said.

But Harris said he saw his community respond. And he saw it again in 2020 when the community again suffered a devastating tornado touchdown.

“You couldn’t find a better quality of people than you have in Putnam County,” Harris said.

By the time that April 3 and 4 outbreak ended, 319 people had died nationwide. 30 F4/F5 tornadoes touched down with a total of 148 tornadoes confirmed in 13 states. $843 million in property damage took place.