Scars from Brandenburg tornado still exist 50 years later

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) — Fifty years ago, on April 3, a monster tornado ripped through the town of Brandenburg, Kentucky taking the lives of 31 people.

On Wednesday evening, the city of Brandenburg paused to remember those people lost in what is known as the 1974 Super Outbreak.

“It was awful, it was shocking when your whole town disappears," said Bill Johnson.

He and his wife Jane sat silently in a pew at First Baptist Church of Brandenburg where a ceremony was held for the 31 people killed on April 3, 1974.

Johnson's wife gently consoled him as names and bells rang for his neighbors and friends taken by the storm. When the storm hit Brandenburg, Johnson was a student at the University of Kentucky, and got a call from his then girlfriend-now wife that their hometown had been hit, and life would never be the same.

“She called me at my dorm room, said that Brandenburg had been hit by a really bad tornado, called home got through to my mother for about 20 seconds, and she said we are all okay, but you can't get here don't try to come tonight,” Johnson said.

He listened to his mother and stayed put, but not for long. He talked his way onto a Lexington radio station with a plea to help Brandenburg. He said the results were overwhelming in the form of truckloads of supplies and trucks to haul everything back to town

“I wasn't able to leave until three o'clock in the afternoon because it took three rental trucks to haul all of the supplies back,” said Johnson.

For three weeks every night, Johnson drove back and forth to Lexington and Louisville picking up supplies.

“With that truck, we would move people's belongings during the day,” said Johnson.

To keep his mind clear and the destruction at bay, he kept busy cleaning up the town.

“There is always a sense of loss of what was so you don't forget that, but you also celebrate the resilience, the ability of people to come back, the ones that could,” said Johnson.

To this day, 50 years later, there are still places in town that will never be the same.

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