A Nashville-area pizzeria was destroyed in a tornado. Thanks to the quick thinking of several employees, nobody died.
In Hendersonville, Tennessee, an EF-2 tornado swept through and did millions of dollars worth of damage to several businesses, including Jolly Ollie’s Pizza & Pub. The pizzeria reported having about 30 people in its dining room when the tornado began sweeping through town. Employees ushered everyone into the basement, where they waited out the storm.
Dilyah Knight, owner of Jolly Ollie’s Pizza & Pub is, unfortunately, no stranger to having her pizzeria destroyed. It was just four years ago that the pizza shop was badly damaged in a fire, shutting it down for 13 months, reports WSMV.
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On Saturday, Knight was at Sam’s Club when she heard the news of the tornado hitting her business.
“I had a [Jolly Ollie’s] uniform on, and a guy just looked at me and said, ‘Do you work at Jolly’s?’” Knight told WSMV. “And I said, ‘I own it,’ and he said, ‘Ma’am, I’m so sorry, but a tornado hit your restaurant.”
Knight was relieved to subsequently learn that everyone was alright. While the tornado ripped off her roof and did catastrophic damage to the rest of the restaurant, she told WSMV that those things are replaceable, but people are not. She also said she was proud of the quick actions of her employees.
“A customer came running to me and said, ‘Your employees saved so many lives today,’ because we lost our doors and windows upstairs, and the deck was blown off,’” Knight said.
She was also overwhelmed by the way the community responded to her restaurant being decimated. She reported that dozens of people were working to clean up the wreckage, donating their labor, tools and food for those pitching in with the relief effort.
“We have people just pulling in with tarps and blankets and water and generators and hugs, and I don’t know them,” Knight said. “They just come and say, ‘We love your place, we just want to make sure that everyone is okay.’ My phone didn’t stop ringing till three o’clock in the morning.
“We lost it again,” Knight said of suffering a second tragedy in four years. “But we’ll build it bigger and better.”
