LOUSIVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Three tornadoes have been confirmed in Louisville, with a fourth in Meade County, Kentucky, after a line of violent storms moved through Wednesday evening. 

During a news conference Thursday morning, John Gordon, the director of the National Weather Service in Louisville, said two tornadoes were identified in Louisville's Newburg neighborhood, and a third was identified in the Pleasure Ridge Park (PRP) neighborhood.

The NWS said a fourth was identified in Meade County, Kentucky.

Gordon said it's fortunate the damage wasn't more extensive.

"It is a miracle that our city ... that there's not more devastation of life," said John Gordon, director of the NWS in Louisville. 

Gordon said officials have identified four tornadoes that touched down in the area. Two of them were in Louisville's Newburg neighborhood, with Gordon clocking their speeds at 90 and 95, making them EF-1 tornadoes.

"I was in Newburg trying to figure out why there was damage from the post office that went over to the VanHoose Education Center, and then there's like 150 yards of just some limbs down," Gordon said. "And then there's a bunch of damage again from the postal distribution center just east of there, and it hit the YUM! Headquarters. The roof took a bunch of damage and then died just east of there. So there’s two little tornados in the Newberg area."

He said NWS officials had identified a third tornado that touched down in the PRP area. Roughly 50 people were displaced from an apartment in the area of Brooklawn Drive and Blanton Lane due to damage. 

Light poles and trees were ripped from the ground, some tossed right on top of the buildings. Windows were shattered and the roofs of the apartment buildings were heavily damaged by falling trees and the powerful winds. One section of a roof was ripped off and tossed up a hill.

"It's a tragedy. You never really feel pain and remorse until it happens to you," said Nahum Neal, a resident of the apartment complex.

Neal had just laid down for a nap in his bedroom at the apartment complex when a tree fell through the room as the tornado hit. 

"I woke up up because the wind was blowing, the rain was coming in. The blinds was shuttering, so I thought let me shut the window before this massive tree comes through the window," he said. "In a matter of seconds it just started picking up. It got rougher and rougher."

Neal's fear came true when the tree smashed through the window, knocking him to the ground.

"It hit me in the shoulder, it hit me in the ribs. It forced me out the bedroom. I lost my balance, I hit my head on the stairwell and I fell down the steps," he said. 

Gordon said he estimated that winds from that tornado reached speeds ranging from 110 to 115 mph. He hoped to learn more about the width and length of the tornadoes once he was able to fly a drone to get an aerial view of the damage. 

"It torments you a little bit. It scars you," said Neal. "This is my first time ever going through this. I'm scared of the rain now. I'm really scared of the rain now."

Even though the fear runs deep, Neal said it still could have been much worse.

"Everything's gonna work out. Everything is gonna work out," he said.

The NWS also identified a fourth tornado in Meade County, an EF-1 with winds clocked at 110 mph. That tornado hit near the intersection of Joe Prather Highway and Cedar Line Road, near Brandenburg, Kentucky.

Gordon said he planned to stay in PRP Thursday afternoon and could get to Crawford County, Indiana later in the day. 

Standing in front of the damaged apartment complex in Newburg, Gordon offered his thoughts to the people displaced from the apartments -- and advised those who live in similar structures, without a basement.

"When you have buildings like this, you need to get to an interior closet – to an interior bathroom – that has the most walls and support," Gordon said.

"If that’s your only option, that’s the place to go – not outside with your camera in the middle of storm," he said.

One person died Wednesday night and officials believe that death is storm-related, but Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg told reporters in a separate news conference Thursday morning that officials were still waiting to hear from the Jefferson County Coroner's Office on a cause of death. 

As of Thursday morning, the LG&E storm outage map indicted there were approximately 7,800 people without power in Jefferson County. 

Greenburg also addressed concerns about the tornado warning sirens and whether they provided proper warning to those affected by the tornadoes.

"To answer one question that we were asked last evening about the tornado – the warning sirens that went off: The city received – our Emergency Response Operations Center -- received notice at 5:18 from the weather service of the tornado warning," Greenburg said. "And within 30 seconds, the warnings were sounded throughout the entire county. So we understand that the report of the tornado was earlier than that. We turn on the sirens, when we receive warning from the National Weather Service, and that’s when we received the tornado warning from the National Weather Service, so we continue to look into that."

Speaking from the scene at PRP, Gordon defended the NWS' decisions on where and when to issue the tornado warnings.

"We had a Severe Thunderstorm Warning out with isolated tornado in it," Gordon said. "Any severe thunderstorm can tornado real quick. We were trying to pick the biggest couplets and not over-warn and drive everyone nuts. We went to 80 mph with a tornado possible and then we put multiple tornado warnings out east of here. Every severe thunderstorm is capable of producing a tornado -- and we put a Severe Thunderstorm Warning out way ahead of time. Twenty, 30 minutes ahead of time."

This story may be updated. 

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