Violent storms swept through Kentucky Wednesday night and into Thursday morning, bringing intense rain, winds and a few radar-indicated tornadoes in several Kentucky communities.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear assured Kentuckians Thursday that there are no reported fatalities as a result of the storm and no injuries have been reported in Louisville yet, according to Mayor Craig Greenberg. Several commercial buildings sustained severe damage in Jeffersontown in the path of one suspected tornado. Greenberg issued a state of emergency as the city deals with damages and braces for excessive rain in the coming days.
“We are very fortunate that when the storm came through and when these strong, damaging winds came through … nobody was hurt,” Greenberg said.
The National Weather Service has not yet officially confirmed the tornadoes, which require ground surveys, or their severity levels.
Power outages also followed the storm's path. As of Thursday afternoon, around 3,500 LG&E/KU customers in Jefferson County remained without power.
There is still a slight risk of severe weather — tornadoes, hail, damaging winds — in the next couple days, but waves of showers and storms causing flooding are the most likely threat over the next several days, according to the National Weather Service.
Damage in east Louisville
Outside the now severely damaged commercial building in Jeffersontown, retired employee Dana Hardin surveyed the damage to the office she used to go to everyday. She had worked at Gordon-Darby Inc., a government contractor, for more than 24 years.
“It was like we were family, you know?” Hardin said. “It wasn't a transient company. People worked here for 10, 20, 30, 40 years.”
Her husband went closer to the wreckage, pulling out the framed diploma of one employee. The corner office of one of the owner’s was completely destroyed, another framed diploma hanging off the destroyed structure. Hardin said they live nearby, but were lucky to avoid any damage.
Next door, the KEP Electric building was reduced to rubble. Wads of insulation littered the ground and clung to nearby trees. In nearby residential areas, trees lay uprooted in yards and electrical poles stood at dangerous angles.
Many in Southern Indiana without power
Southern Indiana emergency officials said the main damage was to trees and power lines. Reports in Clark County included a tree on a mobile home and a rescue from a car in flood water, however no injuries were reported. Clark Emergency Management Deputy Director William Bower said they saw “very light damage throughout the county, considering the size of the storm that we had.”
Floyd County also had no reported injuries. Floyd County Emergency Management Agency Director Kent Barrow said Thursday morning he also wasn’t aware of structural damage.
“I don’t think it was as bad in this area as it was talked up to be, but it’s bad enough,” Barrow said. “Unfortunately, there's people without power, and have been for several hours, and so I mean to them, it's devastating."
There were still a few thousand Duke Energy customers without power as of Thursday afternoon, most of them in an area near the Floyd County 4-H Fairgrounds where large utility poles snapped.
Bower, with Clark County, said they’d known about the potential for severe weather for about a week.
“We plan for the worst. But I do believe that we came in…under the radar, and started out pretty well for this event and its size and the damage that it did in other counties adjacent.”
