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JACKSON, TN — When Casey Kidd and his roommates emerged from a bathroom inside the Watters residential complex at Union University here last Tuesday (Feb. 5), they were in for a surprise.

Kidd, a freshman at Union and an Oneida native, and four others had taken refuge in the bathroom when a tornado made a direct hit on the university’s campus, destroying a large number of the buildings and injuring dozens.

“They had been telling us for about an hour that the tornado might hit,” Kidd — back home in Oneida — said Monday.

Forecasters had warned throughout the day Tuesday that conditions were ripe for strong tornadoes, with warm, moist air flowing into the region from the Gulf of Mexico and cold, dry air pushing in from the northwest. By late afternoon, ominous looking “supercells” had begun to show up on radar in eastern Arkansas and West Tennessee, setting the stage for what would turn out to be one of the deadliest weather-related disasters in Tennessee’s history.

Shortly before 7 p.m. Tuesday evening, warning sirens sounded on the Union University campus, sending students scrambling for cover. In the Watters Complex, Kidd and four others sought refuge in the bathroom of their two-story dorm suite. Fifteen minutes later, the tornado struck.

“We could hear it coming,” Kidd said. “You can feel it; your ears start getting pressurized.”

Sweeping across campus quickly, the storm was over in a matter of seconds.

“We didn’t really know that anything had happened, because our bathroom stayed intact,” Kidd said. “We walked out and had a nice sunroof in the living room.”

The ceiling of the first-floor room had partially collapsed and partially been ripped away. “The upper room upstairs was just gone,” he said.

Kidd and his friends were fortunate to escape unscathed. But in another area of the building nearby, the commons area had collapsed, trapping several students beneath the rubble.

University officials placed all students who were on campus in the hallways of a classroom building that had not been damaged by the storm, where they waited for the storms to calm. Afterwards, there was no where to go for most students but home.

Many students lost all their belongings they had on campus. Kidd, who graduated from Oneida High School in 2007 and is majoring in Christian Studies at Union, said that he was able to bust through a window of his dorm and grab his Bible, wallet and laptop computer before leaving campus Tuesday night.

“The ceiling was falling down in my room and there was some debris in there, but most of my stuff seemed to be intact,” he said. He is sure the ceiling eventually collapsed on his room, however.

“The only thing I left with was a pair of shorts and tennis shoes,” he said.

While 50 students were injured in the storm — including at least one critically — there were no fatalities. And at the 3,300-student Christian university, they’re calling that a miracle.

“Just walking through the debris after it happened, there is no way that there shouldn’t have been several deaths,” Kidd said. “God was definitely looking out for us.”

Touring the campus on Friday, U.S. Senator Bob Corker echoed Kidd’s sentiments.

“There was no loss of life. I think that was an absolute miracle,” Corker said.

On a night where more than 50 people were killed by the storms — including 30 in Tennessee — Corker said that the nation was inspired by Union University.

“The nation focused on this outstanding university and I have to tell you the way the students handled themselves here has inspired a nation. I know that Union’s leaders can be awfully proud of these students.”

Union officials plan to resume classes on Feb. 18. The biggest issue is finding housing for all the students while construction can replace the housing complexes destroyed in Tuesday’s storm.