BOWLING GREEN, Ky. — First Lady Jill Biden toured a Bowling Green neighborhood on Friday that was ravaged by a tornado and promised that the town would recover in the months ahead.
“I know it probably felt more like an end than a beginning,” Biden said of a second, less powerful storm that unnerved residents when it Bowling Green on Jan. 1, just weeks after the deadly Dec. 11 tornadoes.
“Yet something new has begun,” Biden said. “Not the quick turn of a calendar page, but the slow movements of the seeds deep in the earth climbing toward the light that will come this spring.”
Biden heaped praise on the lines of people who donated blood, the food trucks that descended upon the area and the neighbors who offered their generators to families without power.
“It will take time to make this beautiful place whole again,” she said, “but what we’ve seen, what we’ve all seen today, is there is faith here too.”
Biden visited the Creekwood neighborhood, which was decimated by a powerful tornado early on Dec. 11.
The tornado killed 16 people directly in Bowling Green and Warren County, and a 17th person died of a heart attack he suffered while cleaning up debris.
There were dozens of people injured. Of the 16 people killed, 12 were from two families who lived on one street in the Creekwood neighborhood. It took five days for searchers to find the final victim, a 13-year-old girl whose parents, three siblings and grandmother also died.
The National Weather Service determined that a total of three tornadoes hit Bowling Green that morning, destroying 500 homes and apartment buildings, badly damaging another 500, displacing thousands of people and damaging or destroying about 100 businesses.
The first lady visited with about 20 residents whose homes were damaged. Offering hugs and words of encouragement, Biden walked amid trash, debris and broken glass that remained on the ground as the clean-up continued a month later.
As she posed for photos, in the air hung the surrounding sounds of sawing and hammering, another indication of the ongoing rebuilding effort in south central Kentucky.
At one point Biden walked over to a mother and her two daughters who were waiting across the street. “We are getting help,” said Mirjeta Mustafa, a resident, according to the pool summary provided by the traveling media on the trip.
“We are so grateful.” Mohammed Alkadhim, another resident who lives a few houses down, brought his son, Awadh, to meet the first lady.
Biden, who was accompanied by Deputy FEMA Administrator Erik Hooks, was greeted at the first stop by Gov. Andy Beshear, Kentucky first lady Britainy Beshear and Rep. Brett Guthrie.
Later at a FEMA-sponsored disaster recovery center also in Bowling Green, she met with volunteers who are collecting clothing for the displaced. At one point while helping place pieces on hangers to be displayed, she came across an Eagles t-shirt.
“This might fit,” quipped the first lady, who grew up in suburban Philadelphia.
The first lady’s trip to Kentucky was originally scheduled for last week but was postponed because of severe winter weather. President Joe Biden visited the state last month pledging he would do “whatever it takes as long as it takes” to support the commonwealth’s recovery.
Residents and volunteers have made good progress since on cleaning up splintered buildings in Bowling Green, but Warren County Judge-Executive Mike Buchanon said there is still a need for volunteers and equipment to help clear debris.
There also is a continued need for donations, including personal hygiene items, non-perishable food items and cash, Buchanon said.
Buchanon suggested donations to the United Way of South Central Kentucky or the South Central Kentucky Chapter of the American Red Cross.
The tornadoes that hit Bowling Green were part of a larger system that devastated several cities in Western Kentucky, including Mayfield, Dawson Springs and Bremen, and caused damage in Tennessee, Arkansas and Missouri as well.
The tornadoes killed a total of 77 people in Kentucky, the most in state history. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) estimated the cost of the outbreak across several states ranged from $2.9 billion to $5.1 billion, with Kentucky taking the worst of it.
The longest track of the dozens of tornadoes on Dec. 10 and 11 was almost 166 miles across a small piece of Tennessee and into Kentucky, NOAA said, with a top wind speed of 190 miles per hour at Mayfield.
NOAA said there was an above-average number of tornadoes in the country last year, with 193 in December alone.
The month was also the warmest December on record, according to the agency.
NOAA included the series of tornadoes that hit Kentucky and other states on its annual list of disasters costing $1 billion or more as a result of hurricanes, floods, wildfires, extreme heat and cold and other severe weather, which is being driven by climate change.
There were 20 separate weather and climate disasters in the country in 2021 that caused at least a billion dollars worth of damage, the most in the continental U.S. since 2011, NOAA said. The total in damages from the 20 events was about $145 billion, NOAA estimated.
Beshear has said it could cost billions of dollars to completely recover from the December tornadoes.
