City Council Tour

Chattanooga City Council members tour tornado damage in East Brainerd on Wednesday.

Council Members describe what they saw.

The tornado damage in east brainerd this morning.

The council spent an hour on a carta bus.

They're looking at some of the estimated 12-thousand 500 homes that that were either damaged of destroyed in the tornado.

According to the national weather service, it stayed on the ground for 9 miles and was 15-hundred yards wide.

There was no formal news conference after the trip.

But news 12's david moore spoke with some council members as they left.

Carol: what i've seen is both good and bad.

Let me start with the bad.

The bad is we've seen total devastation of a number of areas.

The good i've seen is the spirit of people helping one and another, comforting one another, reaching out to one another.

That is the chattanooga way.

The devastation is going to take a wild to get over but i think when we all work together we can do it.

Chip: when you look at the devastation you look at the amount of destruction that a lot of these houses encountered... the loss of life was really very minimal.

I don't want to, i don't want to minimize the lives that were lost .

But just looking at the destruction knowing that we didn't have more loss of life i think was a miracle.

Darrin: residents surprisingly were very... probably still in shock, if you will.

But they were also very grateful.

And i tell you there was an incredible spirit that was floating through the area amongst the devastation that i thought was incredible.

And that was neighbors helping neighbors without hesitation without reservation.

And there was a lot of just... we're glad to be here.

More of the hard hit area was in ledford's district.

Of the thousands of damaged homes and businesses, only about 25-hundred had been assessed as of