50 years after F5 tornado hit Brandenburg, Kentucky, survivors still relive deadly day

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- The only F5 tornado to ever hit Kentucky touched down in Brandenburg on April 3, 1974.

It gutted the small Meade County town on the banks of the Ohio River with a black wall of more than 250 mile per hour winds that decimated everything in its path.

"I saw it coming," Tom Bridge remembers. "I saw the roofs of houses, the gables of houses fling through the air. Those image you never get out of your mind or your brain they’re just burned in."

Bridge was a 25-year-old newspaper deliveryman in 1974 working his route for the Meade County Messenger when the storm hit. He was also a part-time minister. So when he pulled behind some building on Brandenburg’s Main Street he huddled underneath the dash and prayed as the whipping wind tossed his pickup truck about.

"I said 'Lord, I didn't know I was coming to heaven in a pickup truck," Bridge recalled as he revisited the scene preparing for the city's service marking 50 years since the storm.

While Bridge survived, half the building on Main Street did not.

BRANDENBURG TORNADO ANNIVERSARY — Damage in Brandenburg, Kentucky after a F5 tornado hit on April 3, 1974.

The tornado killed 31 people, destroyed 128 homes and flatted 30 buildings including the Meade County Courthouse and Brandenburg’s city hall.

"I still have nightmares this time of year when I think about it," Bridge said.

But many in Brandenburg will be thinking about that defining day Wednesday. The city will host a remembrance ceremony honoring the 31 lives lost at First Baptist Church. The name of each victim will be read aloud as a bell tolls at 4:10 p.m. commemorating the minute the tornado cut through town.

"I’ll never forget it," Brandenburg Mayor David Pace said. "I didn't know what a tornado was."

Pace was a 17-year-old high school senior on the day of the storm. He remembers kicking in a door at the house that doubled as city hall to take cover and worrying about getting in trouble because of the damage. In the end, the broken door didn’t matter much as the storm bore down the walls around him.

"People were bleeding, power poles in the ground. It was destruction everywhere," Pace remembered.

Pictures tell the tale of what this community endured. They show impassable streets littered with the battered remains of cars tossed about, snapped trees and ruble from houses reduced to kindling.

Brandenburg only had about 1,500 people back then, so no one was a stranger. It made each loss personal and the rush to help more dire.

"We went down and got Ms. Rose Grinnell out from under her store that had collapsed on her," Bridge said. "She was in her 80s and had some difficulty getting out. We just huddled under there and got her out."

"I had an older truck that we use to help every person we could," Pace said. "We hauled what belongings we could salvage for them. Our fairgrounds became a storage facility for anything people could get. It kind of a refuge place people to go get stuff."

Now, even 50 years later, the people who survived the storm can still see the wreckage in their minds. That was never more evident than after we took a ride with Steve Straney retracing its path. He was in the same class as Pace and also 17 years old on the day he said "the town changed."

"Most of the fatalities were right here in this section," Straney recalled pointing to a street one block behind a church on Brandenburg’s West Hill. "There was a family and the last name was Son, their kids, she was a single mother and they had just come from the library. They got caught right in the middle of a tornado and they were scattered and I found one of the children down closer to the church down there."

The rescues and recoveries are what these neighbors remember most. Digging through the rubble to find the wounded and the dead.

"You did what you had to do. We were using doors kind of like gurneys. We were taking doors off houses, putting people on them and carrying them to the street," Straney said.

Fort Knox and the National Guard came to town quickly with nurses, doctors and supplies, using a helicopter to fly out the injured to local hospitals.

"It was almost like being in a war zone," Straney said.

The1974 tornado is part of what's now known as the Super Outbreak. Brandenburg took one of the hardest hits but it was not alone. In one day, 148 twisters cut paths of destruction across 13 states and Ontario, Canada. The storms injured six thousand people, killed 300 and caused $1 billion dollars in damage. It flattened the barns at Churchill Downs in Louisville and the same twister from Brandenburg stayed F5 strength when it cut across the Ohio River and roared into southern Indiana.

"Something good came out of it and that's the early warning system," historian Gerry Fischer said. "There was no such system until this tornado."

Back then tornado warnings often came by word of mouth. Neighbor calling neighbor saying it's heading your way.

In 1974, the National Weather Service was still using 1950s-era equipment. The super outbreak sped up development for more advanced radar technology and the political will to fund it. It paved the way for the emergency alerts that now come across your television and cell phones and the widespread use of tornado sirens.

That's what survivors in Brandenburg hold to today, the fact that the lives lost so many years ago saved countless others.

"There was so much trauma and so much grief," Bridge said. "You have to ask how do I turn this around and make it something positive for others."

They did not die in vain.

"I'll never forget it," Pace said.

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