(04-28-2011 01:36 PM)CD11 Wrote: I know Louisville got that F4 that hit Freedom Hall and I think the fairgrounds.... how many others hit the area that day in '74?
Cherokee Park was wiped out. Had many 100+ year old treas taken out. A neighborhood called Northfield was obliterated. Brandenburg, which is a city a bit south of Louisville was destroyed as well.
There is a website dedicated to that day called
April31974.com
Here is a bried Synopsis from
wikipedia
Brandenburg, Kentucky tornado
The Brandenburg tornado, also producing F5 damage, touched down in Breckinridge County at 4:25 pm CDT and followed a 34-mile (54 km) path. First producing F3 damage at the north edge of Hardinsburg , the storm intensified as it moved into Meade County, producing F5 damage as it swept through Brandenburg, along the Ohio River before dissipating in Indiana. 31 were killed in the storm including 18 at a single block of Green Street in Brandenburg.[18] The vast majority of homes and businesses including the High School, the Baptist Church, the old bank building and the Meade Hotel were either damaged or destroyed. The radio station WMMG (AM) was also destroyed. Sadly, the citizens of Brandenburg had received very little warning, which may account in part for the tragically high death toll; it has been reported that the only warning received by listeners to WMMG was when the disc jockey on duty looked out the window, saw the twister coming, and shouted at his listeners to take cover, shortly before the twister destroyed the radio station.[citation needed]
Several tombstones in the Cap Anderson cemetery were toppled, broken and even some were displaced a small distance. Most of the trees vanished as well.
A complete description of homes and other structures destroyed in order by the tornado in Brandenburg can be found here.[19]
When the twister struck on April 3, 1974, many of the Brandenburg residents at that time had also experienced a major flood of the Ohio River that affected the area in 1937 as well as numerous other communities along the river, including Louisville and Paducah.
The same storm would later produce tornadoes in the Louisville metro area.
Louisville tornado
About an hour after the Brandenburg tornado, an F4 tornado formed in the southwest part of Jefferson County near Kosmosdale. Another funnel cloud formed over Standiford Field Airport, touched down at The Kentucky Fair and Exposition Center, and destroyed the majority of the horse barns at the center and part of Freedom Hall (a multipurpose arena) before it crossed Interstate 65, scattering several vehicles on that busy expressway. The tornado continued its 22-mile (35 km) journey northeast where it demolished most of Audubon Elementary School and affected the neighborhoods of Audubon, Cherokee Triangle, Cherokee-Seneca, Crescent Hill, Indian Hills, Northfield, Rolling Hills, and Tyler Park. The tornado ended near the junction of Interstates 264 and 71 after killing two people, injuring 207 people, destroying over 900 homes, and damaging thousands of others. Cherokee Park, a historic 409-acre (1.66 km2) municipal park located at Eastern Parkway and Cherokee Road, had thousands of mature trees destroyed. A massive re-planting effort was undertaken by the community in the aftermath of the tornado.
In addition to the two fatalities directly associated with the event, two other deaths were indirectly associated; a heart attack in the immediate aftermath and a construction worker who fell while repairing Freedom Hall two weeks later.[citation needed]
Dick Gilbert, a helicopter traffic reporter for radio station WHAS-AM, followed the tornado through portions of its track including when it heavily damaged the Louisville Water Company's Crescent Hill pumping station, and gave vivid descriptions of the damage as seen from the air.[20] A WHAS-TV cameraman also filmed the tornado when it passed just east of the Central Business District of Louisville.[21]
WHAS-AM broke away from its regular programming shortly before the tornado struck Louisville and was on-air live with John Burke, the chief meteorologist at the National Weather Service's Louisville office at Standiford Field when the tornado first descended. The station remained on the air delivering weather bulletins and storm-related information until well into the early morning hours of April 4. As electrical power had been knocked out to a substantial portion of the city, the radio station became a clearinghouse for vital information and contact with emergency workers, not only in Louisville but across the state of Kentucky due to its 50,000-watt clear-channel signal and the fact that storms had knocked numerous broadcasting stations in smaller communities, such as Frankfort, off the air. Then-Governor Wendell Ford commended the station's personnel for their service to the community in the time of crisis, and Dick Gilbert later received a special commendation from then-President Richard Nixon for his tracking of the tornado from his helicopter
There is also a listing for Xenia, but it is really long.