One family suffered an unspeakable tragedy - the death of a baby girl.ĭouglas Koon, his wife, Jackie, and their three children huddled in his mother-in-law’s bathroom in Dawson Springs as the storm approached. Residents searched the wreckage in hopes of finding possessions they could salvage. Some deliveries took him to homes reduced to rubble.
“A lot of people are just thankful they’re alive.” “For the most part, you can go three city blocks and it all looks like toothpicks,” said Darryl Kelley, who was delivering food and water around town. In Dawson Springs, homes and businesses were in ruins as the realization sunk in that the recovery will take years. The storms killed dozens of people in the state and crippled towns across a long swath of western Kentucky. If you ever did anything wrong, they (parents) knew it before you got home.” It was one of those places that was so easy to grow up in, because everybody knew everybody, and everybody watched out for everybody. “It’s a personal tragedy,” Steve Beshear said in a phone interview. Steve Beshear, grew up in the tightknit western Kentucky community, where a local leader estimates at least 60% of the town of nearly 3,000 is “beyond repair.” Beshear’s father, former two-term Democratic Gov. He has made multiple visits to the stricken region and held numerous news conferences, putting him in the national spotlight.ĭawson Springs is connected to a mini-political dynasty in the Bluegrass State. The governor, a Democrat elected in a state largely controlled by Republicans, is known for his frequent vows that “we’ll get through this together,” first in fighting the coronavirus and now in responding to the storms. “This is a place where I’d go and I’d sit on my grandparents’ front porch,” he said.īeshear, who since the early days of his term has led his state’s battle against the COVID-19 pandemic, came under heavy scrutiny amid early uncertainties on the storm-related death toll, especially at a candle factory that was leveled in Mayfield. He has mourned with every stricken town, but no subject has touched him more personally than the devastation in Dawson Springs, his father’s hometown and a place he has visited his entire life. The governor said he has an uncle by marriage who lost two cousins who died in Muhlenberg County.Īll of that may explain why Beshear, the face of his state’s response to the historic outbreak of tornadoes, has veered at times between assertions of steadfast determination - declaring that Kentuckians are “strong enough to rebuild″ - and raw emotion. “It took me eight hours to get in touch with her, just calling over and over.”īut his extended family also was among the Kentuckians grieving the loss of life from the storms. “There’s a good ending to the story,” Beshear, the state’s Democratic governor, said at a news conference Monday. Beshear has made multiple visits to the stricken region and held numerous news conferences, putting him in the national spotlight.The storms killed dozens of people in the state and crippled towns across a long swath of western Kentucky.Steve Beshear is from Dawson Springs, and his cousin Jenny still lives there Dawson Springs, one of the many communities hit by devastating tornadoes on Friday, Dec.
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