BOWLING GREEN, Ky. — There are still mounds of splintered wood and other debris piled along streets in several Kentucky cities pummeled by tornadoes nearly a month ago, but they are continuing to dig out and businesses are reopening.
In Bowling Green, for instance, the Beverly Hills Bargain Boutique was back in business Jan. 4 after being closed more than three weeks while power was being restored.
The clothing store on the 31W Bypass had a blue plastic trap covering damage to the roof, but also a steady flow of customers.
It’s something of a metaphor for the recovery from the most deadly night of tornadoes in Kentucky history.
“I’m seeing everyday a little bit of improvement,” said store owner John Horner.
Still, no one doubts that it will take a long time for a full recovery. How long is uncertain, and there is some concern that some places won’t make it all the way back.
A series of tornadoes that hit Kentucky on Dec. 10 and 11 damaged or destroyed thousands of homes and businesses and killed at least 77 people.
The heaviest damage was in Graves County, where a candle factory collapsed on workers in Mayfield; Warren County, where most of the deaths occurred on one street in Bowling Green; and in Dawson Springs and Bremen.
There were tornadoes confirmed in several other counties, however, including Boyle, Madison and Hardin, according to the National Weather Service.
The weather service counted a total of 20 tornadoes in the outbreak.
A month on, the work to clean up and build back is still in the early days.
There’s a mind-numbing amount of work for residents and officials — dealing with federal, non-profit and religious aid organizations, filing claims for assistance, coordinating volunteers, arranging to remove thousands of tons of debris, searching for equipment and figuring out housing for displaced people in cities where the rental market was tight even before hundreds of homes and apartments were wiped out.
“It has been the most difficult and stressful three weeks of my life,” Hopkins County Judge-Executive Jack Whitfield Jr. said last week.
Whitfield said just after the storm hit his county, causing 17 deaths, a judge-executive from an adjoining county rode around with him and answered his phones because he was getting so many calls.
The storm destroyed 302 homes and businesses in the county or damaged them beyond repair, and had at least some impact on a total of 900 structures, Whitfield said.
Whitfield said that left at least 780,000 cubic yards of debris to clean up. That volume of mulch would weigh nearly 200,000 tons.
Getting that debris cleared away has to be a priority to make way for rebuilding, officials in several counties said, and they are working on it.
As of Jan. 6, for instance, 83,952 cubic yards of debris had been hauled away in Bowling Green and another 17,539 in the county, said Travis Puckett, deputy emergency manager for the county.
“I think we’re making substantial progress,” he said.
Local officials across the region hit by the tornadoes said the work of volunteers, the American Red Cross, federal agencies, faith groups and companies had been invaluable in dealing with the tornadoes.
Some people would not have had the financial or physical ability to clean debris from their home sites and pile it for pickup without volunteer help, for instance, said Warren County Judge-Executive Mike Buchanon.
Another key immediate need is housing.
Housing already was tight in Bowling Green and Warren County because of quick growth in recent years, and the tornadoes wiped out 500 houses and apartments and damaged another 500 so badly it will take months to fix them, Buchanon said.
The sheer volume of work will mean delays in getting contractors to fix houses and apartments.
“You can’t get a contractor right now,” Buchanon said.
Local officials estimate 5,000 or more residents in Bowling Green were displaced. They are living with family, friends or in motels, but some have had to go to Tennessee or Indiana to find a place to stay, Buchanon said.
Several local officials said there are discussions underway about how to provide long-term temporary housing for people displaced by the tornadoes.
One potential would be to hook trailers or recreational-type vehicles to utilities at sites where people used to live or in developments nearby, helping preserve those neighborhoods while rebuilding goes on, officials said.
“If we can get ’em close to where they were that would be best,” Whitfield said.
Chasity Coleman lost everything when a tornado destroyed the home in Bowling Green she shared with her 5-year-old son. They stayed with her mother and at a motel for more than three weeks while she searched for a new place to rent.
Several times she saw places advertised online, but when she called the were already snapped up, Coleman said.
She finally found a townhouse — for $200 a month more than her old rent — a few days ago.
“It’s so hard here because everyone is looking for a place at the same time,” said Coleman, a hair stylist.
Coleman said she was grateful that she and her son weren’t hurt, because so many people were injured or killed. For her, not having a permanent place to live was the hardest thing in the aftermath of the tornadoes.
“Being homeless and having to start all over . . . it’s crazy,” she said. “We’re just trying to get moved in and put the pieces back together.”
Three tornadoes hit Bowling Green early on Dec. 11, including one that wrecked scores of businesses along the busy 31W Bypass, a key business area in the city.
Seventeen people died as a result, and at least 84 were injured. There were likely other injuries that were not reported to authorities, Puckett said.
Two local hospitals ran low on blood, Buchanon said.
Some other places hit by the tornadoes had a shortage of housing because they weren’t growing, so builders weren’t putting up many new houses or apartments.
Whitfield said Hopkins County and Dawson Springs lost population between the 2010 and 2020 census counts. He is concerned that without a quick housing solution, more people will leave.
“I’m worried about it,” he said.
Bill Patterson, 69, said he had caught himself a few times in recent weeks driving to the house where he and his wife Barbara, 68 had lived for nearly 40 years before it was destroyed by the massive tornado that hit Mayfield on Dec. 10.
They were still staying at a motel last week last week. Trying to get back to a sense of normalcy has been hard, he said.
“I don’t have a home to go to. It’s not easy,” he said.
But Patterson said he and his wife want to build back at the site of their old home.
There is still a great need for help in the communities hit by the tornadoes. One way to do that is through the Team Western Kentucky Tornado Relief Fund.
In Graves County, the Mayfield Community Foundation has used donations to address a range of needs, including gas for generators for people without power, utility and hotel bills, mattresses, heaters and windshields on cars.
“People are just absolutely trying to survive,” said Steven Elder, a director of the foundation. “Every day’s the same. You wake up and the devastation is still there.”
The foundation decided last week to buy a limited number of cars for people so they could get to work.
A month on, the picture on businesses reopening is mixed.
The tornado wrecked much of the building occupied by EZ Rent It in Bowling Green, but it was back in business within a few days after the telephone company was able to switch its two lines to the cell phone of the manager.
The front of the store is still in tatters, but employees Layke Taylor and Logan Selvidge were there last week, working out of what had been a storage area where the roof got shifted by the tornado but was still mostly intact.
It could take months to rebuild the rest, said owner Tommy Loving.
“There’s a lot to do but we’re coming back,” Loving said.
Several nearby businesses were still closed, however, including two restaurants and a tire shop, and what used to be a vape shop next door is a pile of rubble.
In Dawson Springs, Becky James and two of her children lost their homes in the storm and she is living in a camper, but she reopened her popular home-cooking restaurant, Ms. Becky’s Place, on Jan. 3.
James said 75 percent of the town was wiped out, but the restaurant survived with some damage.
Getting the doors open is a step toward getting back to normal, she said.
“Things are looking better,” James said.
Bowling Green Mayor Todd Alcott said he was grateful for the outpouring of support his community and others have seen, and proud of the local response to the disaster. The community’s resilience was tested and proved, he said.
“We’re gonna grow better out of this,” Alcott vowed.
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