‘That image will never leave me.’ 1 year after tornado, Bowling Green family works to rebuild

The night a tornado hit Bowling Green last year, Ginny Hensley was already on high alert.

A tornado had struck her house in Glasgow, Kentucky, in 1997. On the night of Dec. 10, 2021, weather conditions reminded her of the 1997 tornado. So when severe weather sirens went off, Hensley took her two daughters and nieces to a friend’s house nearby, where they could shelter in a basement.

Her husband stayed at their home, and was doing laundry when the tornado hit their house. He felt the impact, and immediately went to a bathroom under their stairs with the family’s two dogs.

After the tornado hit, Hensley tried to reach her husband. Without cell service, it was hard to get in contact with him. Because the tornado hit in the middle of the night, they had no idea what the impact on their house was. But she could see debris and downed trees in the Briarwood neighborhood as she made her way back to her home.

“Our neighborhood was very devastated,” Hensley said.

The only way she could get home was by walking through yards in the neighborhood, accompanied by her friend’s husband. The only was she could get inside her house was from the backyard due to debris.

“I will never forget coming through the backyard, and there was a flash of lightning, and with the light you could see what was gone,” Hensley said. “That image will never leave me. At that point, I had no idea. I knew my husband was OK, that he was still in the house and we had to get him out of the house.”

The roof of their home was ripped away in the tornado, as well as most of the second story, Hensley said. Severe water damage to the first floor resulted in have to tear down the wreckage and rebuild.

The garage was the only part of the home that wasn’t damaged, Hensley said, which is where her husband and dogs escaped from after the storm passed.

‘It has shown us so much love’

After getting her husband out of the house, the family went to their niece’s apartment, which was completely undamaged. They were able to shower and collect their thoughts before returning to their home the next day.

“By the time we got back to our house when there was daylight, we probably already had 30 people in our front yard,” Hensley said. “I totally lost it. That community feeling was something that I’ve never experienced in my life.”

The community came together to help clean up the residence, boxing up what was able to be saved. Some of those boxes are still in storage a year later, Hensley said.

“We were all OK, and our neighbors were OK, but we knew just across town that was not the same thing, and it put it all into perspective,” Hensley said.

Tornadoes that night killed 80 people across the state, including 15 people in Warren County. The road towards recovery has been long, but Hensley said her family has been fortunate, all things considered.

While her family has had a productive relationship with their insurance company, Hensely said the payments are not enough to cover the cost of rebuilding their home.

A friend was selling a house prior to the tornadoes and is allowing the family to live there while they finish rebuilding on the same lot where their old home was.

“I think the hardest part for us is not bad, because we’ve had a great roof over our head, we just don’t have our stuff,” Hensley said. “We haven’t had our beds, we haven’t had any of those things. It’s material, so it’s fine. We wanted to wait until we get back into our forever home to repurchase.”

Looking back, Hensley said she is still struck by how the community gathered together so quickly. Hensley works in Housing and Residence Life at Western Kentucky University, and said the university was incredibly supportive. She was able to take time away from work in the weeks after the tornado. Bowling Green also came together to support people who had lost things, she said.

“This was the biggest challenge my family has ever gone through ... but it has also shown us so much love,” Hensley said. “It made us want to help others more, because we saw how much love and support we received from people that we knew or we didn’t know, or people we hadn’t seen in years that were showing up. It makes you realize that there’s a lot more good in this world than there is bad.”