While many people have seen the news about the tornadoes that swept through Tennessee and neighboring states last night, I thought I would point out that Union University was hit pretty badly. Fifty–one students were injured and nine hospitalized, though fortunately the injuries were not life-threatening. Forty percent of the dorms were destroyed, while another forty percent of the dorms received damage. Several academic buildings were also damaged. Classes have been suspended until February 18.
Union used a blog — Union University Emergency on Blogger — to provide news and information while their servers on campus were out. The Baptist Press is also running a blog with updates.
Union University is one of the three Baptist colleges in Tennessee that are or have been associated with the Tennessee Baptist Convention. The other two are Bethel College and Carson–Newman College. I graduated from Carson–Newman, as did Jim West.
(When went to Jim’s blog just now to copy the address for the link above, I noticed he has a post about the tornado as well. It contains some links to news sites and a video showing the damage.)
The Memphis Commercial Appeal has an article about the disaster. According to the article, tornado preparedness drills the university runs regularly helped prevent fatalities. The university alert system had gone into effect, so many students had taken shelter. The article contains some first–hand accounts from some students trapped in the rubble.