'Broke my heart': Father, son describe deadly Wilson County tornado

A tornado tore threw Wilson County on Thursday, killing a man and tearing the roof off Springfield Middle School in Lucama. WRAL News spoke with Robbie Driver, who is captain of the volunteer fire department in Lucama, and his son, Bryson, a student at Springfield Middle School.
Posted 8/9/2024, 4:29:00 PM Updated 8/10/2024, 12:58:09 PM

Upon arriving on scene to it

You know with the fire department you know just seeing

the destruction the whole front of the school being blown

off um brickwork laying everywhere insulation all over the place

having the metal off the roof blown all out into

the highway in front of the school trees laying everywhere

I mean it's just destruction everywhere houses across the road

seeing the the destruction of those is just devastating to

see this happening in your small town community

Let me it just broke my heart because I was

looking forward to starting a new seventh grade year with

all my friends after the summer playing sports and stuff

like that

And then whenever we got here and I saw it

was all tore up it was just I was in

shock

Mm

Not really just yeah

Not really

Oh yes

One of my sixth grade classrooms from last year was

the main site of destruction

It looks like it was already set up for a

new school year for a bunch of fifth graders to

come in and have a good school year too

Going into uh you know a new school year and

your school looks like this

One of my questions is what am I gonna do

Like where am I gonna go now And stuff like

that because it's ruined

And then another question is if it happens again in

the future what are we gonna do again Uh and

what about you dad You know Uh well I we

have a excellent school system here in Wilson County

You know our our superintendents all the way down you

know to the staff here at Springfield Middle you know

I made contact with the principal yesterday morning you know

early morning hours of what was going on

You know just the questions the answers that we were

getting that early on you know Doctor Mills

He's been phenomenal you know throughout the past with handling

situations like this in our county

Do you want the So you might have to um

right now it's just you know what's next what what's

gonna happen you know to the kids I think there's

roughly 400 between 436 450 kids that attend the school

you know are are they gonna be split up are

they gonna have to go to different areas Are we

going back to remote learning until they can fix this

You know what's our next steps as a community to

rebuild after the devastation that we've gone through I hear

more questions

Yeah

You kind of touched on community kind of talk about

the community

Like what did you see Obviously this is very visible

but what did you see in the coming hours mornings

Um kind of as daylight woke up

You know like I said earlier being one of the

the local first responders here with the volunteer fire department

in luu comma you know first and foremost I want

I do want to to give a shout out to

Wilson 911 tele communicators

They handled this with 100% calmness you know you never

saw the stress that come out of them

Um And then just getting the resources to where we

need it

You know a as the morning come up we've got

houses along Wiggins Mill Road Lloyd Road Scott's Church Road

all within a mile two miles of this area

You know that there's just complete destruction to homes you

know where where where are they going You know that's

my biggest concern

Um It is just making sure everybody's safety is first

and foremost put at hand you know what's going on

Um We had you know multiple houses that did you

know obviously have trees going through them

Um a local church here in the community that's destroyed

you know probably two miles away

Um Just friends family you know people you know you

you you just wanna help them you know there there's