New storm shelter opens in Montgomery County’s Flatwood community

The Montgomery County Commission has cut the ribbon to a new storm shelter in the Flatwood community, where two people were killed in a tornado in 2022.

The EF-2 tornado hit the community, which is just north of Montgomery city limits, at 3AM on November 30, 2022. Investigators say a large tree hit a home where 8-year-old Cedarrius Tell was inside with his parents, 39-year-old Chiquita Broadnax and Cedric Tell. The boy and his mother were killed. His father had to be rescued and taken to a hospital for emergency surgery.

Chiquita Broadnax, 39, and her son Cedarrius Tell, 8, were killed by the tornado in Montgomery County on Wednesday, November 30, 2022. Photo from Antonio Broadnax via ABC News

Nearby, the Flatwood Community Center sustained heavy damage.

Even since that storm, work has been underway to restore that area. The new storm shelter has a capacity of 74 people. It can withstand winds of 250MPH, the equivalent of an EF-5 tornado.

“An EF-2 tornado came through here, displaced a lot of families, destroyed homes, debris was everywhere, and there was no place for them to go to during that storm, and so we don’t want to look back and say what might have been, but we are certainly happy to have the storm shelter here and the stimulus for that was the tornado that took place November of 2022,” Montgomery County Commissioner Isaiah Sankey told Action 8 News.