It’s official! Tornado touched down in Whitley County

It’s official. Whitley County got hit by a tornado Monday afternoon.

Whitley County Emergency Management Director Danny Moses said Tuesday afternoon that officials with the National Weather Service in Jackson visited the area, and confirmed that a F-Zero tornado touched down in the Bray’s Chapel and Barnhill Road areas, which are in the western central part of Whitley County.

An F-Zero tornado is the lowest end of the tornado scale.

National Weather Service officials said the damage was consistent with 95 mph winds. Moses said that he doubts there will be enough damage in Whitley County for a state disaster declaration to be declared.

Damage was limited to barns and outbuildings, but some hard wood trees were affected as well, which is indicative of winds around 95 miles per hour, officials said.

In the wake of the swift-moving, power-packed storm system that raged through the tri-county area Monday afternoon were downed trees, interrupted power and widespread property damage, officials say.

Whitley County was spared some of the worst of the storm, which hit areas of Pulaski County and Laurel County hardest, locally. Far western Kentucky was most heavily impacted.

Wind speeds were clocked at over 70 mph across Whitley County.

Countywide damage

Whitley County Judge-Executive Pat White Jr. and Moses said that most of the downed power lines and the majority of storm damage appeared to have happened in either Williamsburg or north of Williamsburg. White said that at least one home was seriously damaged in the Buffalo area, and that at least four barns or out buildings were blown down in the Wolf Creek, Bray’s Chapel, Cripple Creek and Hole in the Wall areas.

Moses said there were also roofs damaged, and numerous power lines down across the county that caused several power outages.

By about 8:30 p.m. Monday, Moses said that Whitley County 911 had received 66 different calls about trees either being down in roads or electrical outages.

The 911 Dispatch Center, which is located at the airport, had to run off a backup generator for several hours due to the power outage.

Even though a tornado officially touched down, White and Moses said that the bulk of the damage they observed over much of the county seemed to come from very strong straight line winds rather than a tornado.

"Everything I saw was straight line winds," Moses noted.

Williamsburg damage

Williamsburg Fire Chief James Privett said reports started coming in about 4:30 p.m. about storm damage, which kept firefighters, police and city maintenance workers busy for the next four hours.

"We had lots of damage done yesterday afternoon when it came through," Privett said Tuesday morning.

The first call the department responded to involved a tree striking a Jeep on West Main Street near Beck’s Creek Road, and trapping a mother and daughter inside.

"A pretty good sized tree blew over. One of the limbs went through the windshield in between the two of them," Privett said. "We had to do a lot of cutting to get that tree off their vehicle."

The woman and her daughter were trapped inside for a few minutes, but passersby were able to free them before firefighters arrived.

"They were very lucky," Privett added.

Emergency officials and maintenance workers soon got reports about a big tree falling across the road at Brush Arbor followed by a report about a tree down on North Sixth Street.

"A big pine tree was across the road, and it had hit an electric pole, and cut it in two. The transformer was lying on the ground. We had a pretty good mess down there to help clean up," Privett said.

After that city workers were busy with calls about trees being down at Old Corbin Pike, Sunshine Valley with four to five trees blown over, and the Cardinal Heights area.

"We had electric out in several places last night for several hours,"

Privett said noting that power at his home on Beck’s Creek only returned about 11:15 a.m. Tuesday.

Privett said that in addition to trees blowing down and electric lines falling, there was some other relatively minor damage in the city. It could have been much worst.

"There was nothing major that I heard of, but it came through pretty strong," Privett said.

North of Williamsburg

Woodbine Fire Chief Rick Fore said his department and Oak Grove Volunteer Fire Department worked most of the evening Monday, and into the early morning hours Tuesday, removing downed trees from roadways and utility lines. Fore said trees blocked, for a time, Hwy. 26, Hwy. 6, the new connector road between the Corbin Bypass and Hwy. 6 and other areas.

A tree had to be removed from Mosley Branch Road Tuesday morning so a Whitley County Schools bus could complete its route.

Fore said many areas remained without power into Tuesday morning.

Power lines were torn down along Eatontown road, and a barn lost its roof on the road as well.

"Most of the building damage is to garages and barns and porches … stuff like that," Fore said. "Other than that, it wasn’t too bad."

A home on Vandorn Street was damaged by a fallen tree. In Tattersall, a vehicle and boat were crushed at one residence on Riva Ridge Trail when a tree was toppled by high winds. Another tree fell on a power line on the same road. Near the entrance to the upscale subdivision, a large tree crashed through a fence.

Along with trees and power lines down across Corbin, the high winds forced the evacuation of the Kmart store.

In Corbin

According to BJ Hillard, district manager for Kmart, about 6 p.m. the high winds picked up the heating unit and slammed it back down onto the roof of the store on U.S. 25E. When the unit fell over, the gas line broke in the back of the store, flooding the store with natural gas.

Employees and customers were evacuated from the store while Corbin Firefighters investigated the scene.

The gas was turned off and the doors opened to vent the building. While the gas remained off, the store was reopened to the public with the hour.

Laurel County

Officials at Jackson Energy Cooperative said Laurel and Clay counties were the hardest hit among the areas the company serves. About 1,600 were without power after the storms moved through Monday night.

By 1 p.m. Tuesday, officials stated 94 customers in Laurel County remained without power. Crews were continuing efforts to restore power.

"Although we made considerable progress Monday night, many of the remaining outages are in remote areas and will take time to restore," said Jackson

Energy Director of Public Relations Karen Combs. "We have called in additional crews from other areas to assist us with restoration, but our operations personnel are estimating that they will be working into Tuesday night to make final repairs."