Before COVID-19 hit Nashville, the tornadoes did.

In the early morning hours of March 3, a pair of twisters ripped through the Tennessee capital at 165 miles an hour. The storm killed some two dozen people and left others homeless, just days before the states first case of the coronavirus was identified in a nearby town and less than three weeks before Nashvilles mayor would issue a safer at home order.

The tornadoes destroyed large swaths of the historically Black neighborhoods of East Nashville and North Nashville , areas already struggling with gentrification .

When the pandemic was starting, a lot of people were out of their homes who were already pretty vulnerable and marginalized, said Aimi Hamraie, an associate professor of health, society and American studies at Nashvilles Vanderbilt University.

But they said, Very quickly people were organizing to help get groceries, to get food to folks who needed it, and really coming together with their neighbors.

People also chased away real estate developers who, within hours of the storm, had descended to snap up devastated properties, even as the owners still stood on their lawns, surveying the wreckage of their lives.