West Liberty KY tornado

[cvavon]

Tribe one of our own got hit with the tornado last nite Kevin Mays aka crispy critter just talked to him and there all right NO ONE HURT!! but lots of damage house need windows and roof hangars roofs and other things not much air plane damage the town is gone he said and there are some fatalities he was not shure how many asked for prayers

[T.Taylor]

Re: West Liberty KY tornado

I saw that on the weather channel this afternoon, glad you made contact, thanks for the info, lived in Middlesboro, KY working on the P-38 several years ago, and they had a tornado go thru there, wish Kevin and those in the area the best, Tom

[freightpilot27]

Re: West Liberty KY tornado

i saw that as well. second thought was Crispy Critter........ "oh no, not again!!"

[M Towsley]

Re: West Liberty KY tornado

I am not sure how Kevin feels about this or if he needs help but I sent him an e-mail checking to see if he needs any 'help' from us. Hopefully he has some form of communications. I will let you know if I hear anything.

[cvavon]

Re: West Liberty KY tornado

Marty I asked the same thing when i spoke to him this afternoon and right now he said his house was still able to live in it as far as the town there on lockdown till the people in charge get done looking for people that are missing still then maybe we could help

[M Towsley]

Re: West Liberty KY tornado

Chuck,

He responded to me and said basically the same thing. He gave me his number so I will call him later today.

[Fred Johnson]

Re: West Liberty KY tornado

Wishing Kevin and his family the best. Count us in on any help. We were lucky the storms went North and South of Shelby county KY.
Fred & Barb Johnson

[Robert Lees]

Re: West Liberty KY tornado

Fred, nice to see you here again, 8 posts in 8 years? You can contribute more than that!

Long time no hear.

Love to Barb,

Rob

[crispy critter]

Re: West Liberty KY tornado

Thanks for all the thoughts and comments. I'm finally able to check internet once in a while. The rescue squad & ambulance service is located directly behind my house and they are running on back up generators and they have wi-fi which they gave me the password to use. As for my house,I live in a double wide on the airport and it is still standing but with damage,more so then I had originally thought after close inspection. I lost several windows which luckily I was able to replace after a friend gave me some used windows he had left over from replacing all of them in his home last year. We were able to patch the roof without any trouble. The underpinning is gone completely, and after a close detailed inspection yesterday we found the has was not setting straight and is off level. It has been twisted and moved on the foundation footers....not really sure what to do about that at this point but time will tell. As for the airport, all the hangers are still standing but all have damage but are repairable and did thier job of protecting items inside of them. Dad's ragwing 170 did receive a hole in the fabric on top of the left wing about the size of a silver dollar but we felt that was very minor considering half the roof and the doors were blown away. All the airplanes outside did receive hail damage and a couple of them get some minor debries damage but all are still flyable I think. After saying all of that, we are very lucky because we got side swipped by this thing, our town is gone, it has leveled every single building,home,& business in down town. No more courthouse, no more police department(90% of all county & city vehicles are destroyed including service vehicles and police cars!!), we no county office buildings at all, no gas stations, no resturants, no dollar stores, no churches, no school(the schools that survives are being used as shelters), NO NOTHING!!....and worst of all, 95% of the homes in town are gone!!! 9 people so far have lost thier lives and still several unaccounted for and if you see this place in person you will be amazed that number isn't much higher. Once again, thanks for the concern & comments. I know you'll like pictures so here's a couple I snapped from my neighors driveway of the tornado coming at us and one of dads hanger too. By the way, most do not know this but we had an F2 tornado that leveled 6 businesses and about a dozen homes 5 miles west of town on wednesday evening, then the F4 that leveled downtown on friday evening, and woke up yesterday morning to 7 inches of fresh wet snow......and our spring storm season doesn't even start until about 2 more weeks!!!!!

I also attached a couple of the windsock & one of my 170's yesterday moring after the snow came.....that was a new windsock too. Sorry if a couple of the pics are a little blurry, I was a little shook up.

[M Towsley]

Re: West Liberty KY tornado

Kevin,

I am sure I say this for everyone who knows you here, but I am glad all of you made it out relatively unscathed compared to the rest of the town. Those are very ominous pictures of the oncoming storm. Living in tornado alley here in Illinois we have had a couple of close ones but nothing like you experienced. I will give you a call later. How did the bank fair?

[Larry Lyons]

Re: West Liberty KY tornado

God bless Kevin, you have our thoughts and prayers. Larry

[N96337]

Re: West Liberty KY tornado

Hang in there Kevin! Sure glad to hear you and yours are ok... and pray for the ones that aren't.
John

[waltermrich]

Re: West Liberty KY tornado

It is quite a shock to here your story and see and here about all of the damage in West Liberty, it has been on CNN and other reports, Im thankfull you are Ok ,and none are hurt. I bought my Taylorcraft from a young man in SummerShade Ky, not far from you 5 years ago . His name is Calvin Wiley, I hope he and his family are Ok , they had a beautifull home and dairy farm with a grass strip .Thanks for all you have shared, You will be in our prayers

[crispy critter]

Re: West Liberty KY tornado

Thanks everyone for the wishes & preyers. I know a few of you have asked about helping or donating items, I'm not sure where you would send them to because the post office is gone too, but the airport is still usable if someone wanted to fly things in and I am here most of the time. I have been instructed to bring all items to the ambulance service building directly behind my house which sets in the corner of the large white factory parking lot. Just in case I'm not here they said if anyone flies items in they can walk down there and they will send someone up with a truck to pick up anything you bring. Items they are needing most right now are things like peanut butter, jelly, potted meat, blankets, pillows, clothes, etc. with the food items currently being at the top of list but when they start to place people out of shelters and into a more permenatly(temporary) location they estimate they will need more of the other living items. They also said they currently have more bottled water, crackers,& bread then they know what to do with so that stuff is not really needed as of now. I have seen UPS running locally today so you might be able to send stuff on UPS and if so you can send it to my address and I'll drop it off, my addy & cell number is listed below. Thanks and best wishes to everyone.

Kevin Mays
50 Airport Way
West Liberty,Ky.41472
(606)359-2557

[crispy critter]

Re: West Liberty KY tornado

It is quite a shock to here your story and see and here about all of the damage in West Liberty, it has been on CNN and other reports, Im thankfull you are Ok ,and none are hurt. I bought my Taylorcraft from a young man in SummerShade Ky, not far from you 5 years ago . His name is Calvin Wiley, I hope he and his family are Ok , they had a beautifull home and dairy farm with a grass strip .Thanks for all you have shared, You will be in our prayers

I know Calvin, great guy, haven't talked to him in a while but I too hope he is doing okay. I don't think he was hit by the storms but I do know they had some really bad ones in his area both last wednesday and friday. I haven't had TV since friday so I really haven't seen the news or weather channel but have been hearing a lot about it from folks across the country calling to check on us. Let me know if you hear from him and hope he didn't receive any of the bad stuff. I have talked to most of the major news networks as they have been buzzing in and out of hear like a swarm of locus,lol....finally calmed down a little bit sunday as the approching weather sent them packing(guess they didn't want to be stuck here with us,can't say I blame them lol). I have met Mike Sidel and Jim Cantore, both very nice gentlemen. Took one of them up for an aerial view of everything Sunday morning I think. I have tried my best to keep my ugly mug out of the interviews and off camera,so far so good....I think.