FRANKFORT, Ky. (LEX 18) — April 3 marks the 50-year anniversary of the 1974 Super Outbreak. Nearly 150 tornadoes touched down across the region, killing 335 people. That outbreak still holds the record for most F-5 tornadoes in a single day.
Several tornadoes touched down in Kentucky. One of them tore through the Shady Acres area in Frankfort, where a woman remembers being ripped out of her home when it hit. You can imagine It’s an experience that’s stuck with her pretty vividly all these years later.
"I heard on the local radio channel that we were having a tornado watch, and I thought, well, it's warm and pretty. Nothing will happen," said Alice Yates.
Yates was 19 years old and living in Frankfort at the time. An F-4 tornado had touched down in Anderson County and was moving toward them.
"It was like three small funnel clouds and they were joining, so we took cover. I went under the bed. My mother lay beside of it," Yates said. "She said, 'Oh my God,' and saw the house next to us go up in the air and then explode. We felt our feet going up, the tumbling, the noise… I was knocked out, but my mother was conscious the whole way,"
When she came to, Yates said she found her mother badly injured.
"She was calling for me, she said it seemed like a long time because she thought I was dead," Yates said. "I noticed that my home was gone, and we were in our neighbor's yard."
Photos from The State Journal in Frankfort show just how badly that tornado devastated communities in the area.
"It was like you see on tv, the war, like everything just exploded and just shredded," Yates said.
Yates spent a couple of days in the hospital. Her mother was there for three weeks.
"There was a child next to me in the Frankfort hospital asking for her parents and they didn't make it," Yates said.
The experience changed them both forever.
"My mother would not live anywhere without a basement. I'm the same way. Either that or some kind of shelter like a root cellar," Yates said.
Yates has carried that experience with her all these years. She also has a single tangible reminder: a robin that once sat on a shelf in the home that a tornado ripped apart.
"It's right here. You will see a little nick and I assume that's from the tornado, or maybe when we retrieved it. My father said it was at least 30 feet up in the air, sitting there," Yate said.
It's a reminder of her resilience and the terrifying power of nature.
Yates said if there’s anything at all anyone should take from her story, it’s that everyone needs a plan in case of a tornado.
