03-04-2025
A different April 3 storm caused panic in 1974
Quite a few Pulaskians spent Thursday hoping that history didn't repeat itself.
It didn't escape the attentions of many around the area that this week's severe storms happened to fall on the 51st anniversary of one of the most destructive tornado outbreaks North America has ever seen.
Over the course of April 3 and 4, 1974, there were 148 confirmed tornadoes throughout the U.S. and Canada – tracked and cataloged by Ted Fujita himself, the creator of the Fujita scale for measuring tornadoes.
According to his study, there were 30 F4 and F5 tornadoes during that outbreak.
All told, the outbreak caused 335 deaths and more than 6,000 injuries.
And Pulaski County contributed to those statistics.
In the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) report on the outbreak, it stated that Kentucky saw 'at least 26 vicious tornadoes' strike between 3:40 a.m. and midnight on April 3.
(The report uses Central Daylight Time (CDT) for all of its records.)
Buried within that report, NOAA states, 'Pulaski County, in south-central Kentucky, was struck by three separate tornadoes during the evening. The first of these (74) touched down near Mt. Victory at 7:55 p.m. CDT and moved into Rockcastle County before lifting. This storm killed six and injured 30 in Pulaski County.
'… The second tornado (73) moved into southern Pulaski County shortly after 9 p.m. after killing 2 and injuring 16 in eastern Wayne County. The storm hit Alpine at 9:20 p.m. CDT and caused 29 injuries in Pulaski County. The County apparently was struck by Kentucky's final tornado of the outbreak (64) between 11:30 and midnight, as the storm moved from Piney Grove Church near the Russell County Line through Nancy and Bobtown to Level Green (In Rockcastle County).'
Pulaski's official total of deaths was eight – the six that were killed on Piney Grove Ridge and two from Alpine who would later die of their injuries.
The Commonwealth Journal covered dozens of stories in the aftermath of the storms.
The April 4, 1974 edition didn't shy away from the devastation.
One story read: 'All of the fatalities in Pulaski County occurred in the Piney Grove community, north of Nancy in the western part of the county. Listed as dead are Mr. and Mrs. Robert Johnson, Mr. and Mrs. Tom Johnson and Mr. And Mrs. Clifford Weddle, all of the Piney Grove community. Robert and Tom Johnson are brothers. The two Johnson families lived about two miles apart, according to Coroner J.B. Morris. The bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Weddle reportedly were found beneath the debris of a demolished house. He was 62 and she was 58. They were discovered and brought in to City Hospital several hours after the other four were found. The Johnsons were taken to Somerset Undertaking Company. The bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Weddle were taken to Bernard Funeral Home in Russell Springs.'
There was also a story from State Trooper Jim McWhorter about members of a community finding a baby – alive – that had been blown out of her home.
'The child's mother and father were injured when their mobile home was whisked away by the tornadic winds,' the article read.
'Trooper McWhorter said he was on his way to Science Hill to check on additional storm damage when he received a radio call that a baby was missing at Towering Hills.
'Neighbors found the infant just as the officer arrived at the scene. The child rested quietly in a small cavity created when a piece of furniture was lifted and dropped by the great blow.
''If the baby was hurt at all, I couldn't tell,' smiled McWhorter. 'It's amazing,' he added. 'The entire trailer blew away and the baby was protected.''
The late Bill Mardis, who was editor at the time of the outbreak, spent years after that compiling even more stories about that day.
'This reporter left work at the Commonwealth Journal shortly after 4 p.m., went home, ate supper, and left for the Briar Bowl,' Mardis said, writing about himself in the third person, in several articles that reflect on the storm.
'… On the way to the bowling alley, I noticed a small dip momentarily from the base of a shelf cloud in the southwest. It disappeared quickly; I thought no more about it.
'A short while later, someone came in the bowling alley and said a tornado had struck Alpine and people were hurt. Then, I remembered, the shelf cloud, the sudden cone-shaped dip. That was the tornado that hit Alpine. I chilled. 'I'm late on the story,' I thought.
'I put my bowling ball in a locker and left the Briar Bowl, hurrying to the Commonwealth Journal newsroom.'
Mardis recalled that then-publisher George 'Jop' Joplin III asked Mardis to go by the Somerset Hospital, located on Bourne Avenue, to check on injuries.
'The storm still raged,' Mardis wrote. 'Lightning was more intense. Thunder rolled, and sirens wailed. The emergency room was a madhouse with injured on stretchers. It took just moments to learn a tornado had roared across Piney Grove Ridge, leveling relatively new brick homes and killing six people.
'One patient was dead upon arrival at the hospital, nine were admitted and 18 treated and released as hospital doctors and staffers worked through the night. Roads were blocked by fallen trees and ambulance and rescue squad personnel had to cut fences along the recently opened Cumberland Parkway to bring injured to the hospital. Searches continued for the dead beneath the storm's rubble.'
Of all the chaos of the evening, Mardis recalled that nobody noticed when WHAS in Louisville reported that there was an earthquake in the area around 9 p.m. that evening.
'There was too much devastation; an angry sky was shaking the ground,' Mardis said.
These days, Pulaskians and people living all over the country have improved technological resources for predicting and warning of potential deadly tornadoes. Many experts point back to the storm of April 1974 as being one of the reasons that technology was sought.
As an article on the NOAA website points out, 'Better communication with all sectors involved in hazardous weather preparation and emergency response, notably mass media and emergency management, was borne of the outbreak, helping to preserve life and property up to the present and beyond.
'The outbreak also highlighted the need for enhanced weather and storm observing capabilities across the U.S. and beyond, spurring the funding and development of new technologies in radar and satellite meteorology, many of which are still in use in the (National Weather Service) to this day.'
The outbreak also helped to expedite the passage of the Disaster Relief Act of 1974, passed by the U.S. Senate just a week after the tornadoes. That act, according to news reports of the day, was notable for not only providing assistance to tornado victims, it also overhauled how federal agencies respond to disaster relief.
