USA Today, by Jeanine Santucci and Zac Anderson: At least 32 people were killed in Kentucky, Missouri and Virginia after storms and tornadoes tore through the region as part of an extreme weather outbreak on May 16, “leaving behind a trail of destruction,” authorities said.
The toll includes at least 23 dead in Kentucky and seven in Missouri, authorities there said. The number of fatalities was expected to continue increasing, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said.
The Kentucky deaths were concentrated in Laurel County in the southeastern part of the state, where a tornado tore through the city of London. A Laurel County firefighter died while responding. Randall Weddle, mayor of the city of London, told the Louisville Courier Journal, part of the USA TODAY Network, that at least 23 people there died. Beshear confirmed at least 18 deaths: 17 in Laurel County and one in Pulaski County. The youngest victim is a 25-year-old Laurel County man.
Beshear said during a 5 p.m. press conference on May 17 that he expected the Kentucky death toll to “potentially rise.”
“This was a devastatingly strong tornado that tore through a subdivision in the middle of the night and that is the worst type of natural disaster,” he said.
The tornadoes came amid a severe weather outbreak with preliminary reports of tornadoes in Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky and even New Jersey.
The tornado that struck the south end of Laurel County leveled more than a dozen houses to their foundations in the Westland neighborhood and left the streets full of brick, wood and personal belongings, the Courier Journal reported.
“I’ve never felt the ground vibrate so hard,” said Keith Clark, whose family huddled in a closet during the storm. “It was really bad. Then hearing neighbors scream and you can’t get to them, it’s pretty scary.”
St. Louis tornado: Up to a mile wide, maximum winds 150 mph
The National Weather Service St. Louis released preliminary information on the May 16 twister that killed five people in the city and injured at least 38.
The tornado was an EF3 with winds of 150 mph, according to a NWS social media post. Its path was at least eight miles long and up to a mile wide. It began in the city of Clayton at 2:41 p.m. Central.
Roads closed, homes damaged
Destruction to buildings and roadways has been widespread, officials said.
Eric Gibson, who heads Kentucky’s Emergency Management department, said hundreds of homes have been damaged in the state.
Parts of 24 state highways were closed May 17 because of the disaster, Beshear said.
The Laurel County Sheriff’s Office, London Police Department and Kentucky State Police answered more than 4,000 calls for service related to the disaster, the governor said.
Nearly 70,000 without power in Kentucky
Beshear said 69,218 people remain without power statewide.
That’s down from a high of 172,711 power outages in the immediate aftermath of the disaster.
Beshear, a Democrat, said he spoke with federal emergency officials about disaster recovery and is working with President Donald Trump’s administration.
“Politics has no place in responding to national disasters like this one, and for the two events that we’ve already had this year, we’ve seen a White House and a FEMA organization that has performed well and has done what we’ve asked,” he said.
Kentucky victims range in age from 76 to 25
Beshear listed the sex and age of those who died in the Kentucky storms. The oldest is a 76-year-old man, the youngest a 25-year-old man, both from Laurel County, a community of 63,000 people south of Lexington in the Appalachian region.
The tornado also killed a 48-year-old and a 51-year-old woman from Laurel County. Beshear didn’t know the ages of three other individuals who died. The other confirmed fatalities are individuals in their 60s and 70s.
At least 10 people are in critical condition and others are receiving medical care, Beshear said.
“All our efforts are still focused on searching and rescuing anyone who might still be in danger,” the governor said. “And tending to those who are still fighting for their lives.”
Kentucky tornado had powerful winds, possibly up to 165 mph
Beshear said he was awaiting more information on the strength of the Kentucky tornado.
The information he received from the National Weather Service, which he said was relayed to him “secondhand,” is that the tornado was an EF3 when it went through the Somerset community.
An EF3 tornado has winds of 136 to 165 mph.
‘A roar like I’ve never heard before’
Sharon Deaton ran up the stairs of her home in Laurel County to grab a candle.
“When I get to the top of the stairs, the roar was unreal,” Deaton said, recalling a reported tornado that struck the area Friday. “Then, there it was.”
She and her family huddled against a wall in a small portion of the family room that’s underground.
“We covered our heads up and prayed really hard,” she said. “Everyone says it sounds like a freight train, but to me it was a roar like I’ve never heard before.”
The family began to hear glass and window panes breaking.
When it passed, Deaton looked around, saw her family was safe, and I said, ‘There is nothing in this house that I can’t leave behind.’”
When the family tried to leave, though, they found they were trapped because they couldn’t get through the garage door or the back door.
As she was rushed by other family members to vehicles and taken to safety, she couldn’t see the neighborhood she’d lived in since the 80s.
Then she returned to it during the daylight of Saturday morning.
“It broke my heart,” Deaton said as she stifled a sob.
She loved this neighborhood by the London-Corbin airport, loved the quiet street where she walked her dog.
Now, her clothes were being stacked in the back of an SUV and several cars sat in her front lawn.
“We don’t even know whose those are,” she said.
Deaton placed her hands over her mouth as she looked across the hills of trees reaching toward the sky with no leaves and houses exposed to their beams.
“I’m just believing that, yes it’s changed, but I know a God that restores, so that’s where we’re at,” she said.
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Prophetic Link:
“While appearing to the children of men as a great physician who can heal all their maladies, he will bring disease and disaster, until populous cities are reduced to ruin and desolation. Even now he is at work. In accidents and calamities by sea and by land, in great conflagrations, in fierce tornadoes and terrific hailstorms, in tempests, floods, cyclones, tidal waves, and earthquakes, in every place and in a thousand forms, Satan is exercising his power. He sweeps away the ripening harvest, and famine and distress follow. He imparts to the air a deadly taint, and thousands perish by the pestilence. These visitations are to become more and more frequent and disastrous. Destruction will be upon both man and beast.” Great Controversy, page 589.
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