Tornadoes Tear Apart 600 Homes
Tornadoes tore across Kentucky Tuesday night, destroying or damaging hundreds of homes in suburban Louisville, tossing cars upside down and knocking out power for thousands. Police reported a few serious injuries but no fatalities.
About 600 homes were believed to have been destroyed or severely damaged, while hundreds more had lesser damage in the hardest-hit area centered along the border between Jefferson and Bullitt counties, authorities said.
Officials in Bullitt and several cities issued disaster declarations.
Emergency shelters were established at area schools and an overnight curfew was imposed.
Law enforcement officials established a command post to conduct a search after receiving a report of a missing 5-year-old girl. But the report appeared to be erroneous, said James Dennis, police chief in Hillview, about 20 miles south of Louisville.
One tornado touched down around 6:30 p.m. near the Bullitt-Jefferson county line, and another hit around 6:55 p.m. at Mount Washington, said John Bollinger of the National Weather Service in Louisville.
Kim Poe took refuge at a church after a tornado ripped apart her home in Pioneer Village, where TV footage showed a seven-mile path of destruction which claimed dozens of upper-middle-class homes.
“There’s one room left from what I could tell,” she told neighbors at the Little Flock Baptist Church. “I just feel for the people who don’t have insurance.”
Aaron Armstrong said his brother’s house was one of many in the Northfield subdivision of Mount Washington that were ruined by tornadoes.
“It’s bad,” Armstrong said. “Two-by-4s were twisted. Doors ripped off. Garage doors twisted. The middle of the house was cracked. … The whole line of houses through there was like that.”
Louisville hospitals reported treating five storm victims, including a tractor-trailer driver in stable condition after the storm blew his truck over and a man whose ribs were broken when the storm struck his mobile home.
Businesses south of Louisville also suffered heavy damage.