Hometown Pounded by Tornados

What now appears to have maybe two tornados pounded my hometown of Kings Mountain Tuesday evening. West Kings Mountain out through Bethlehem and Oak Grove communities seem to have been hit the hardest.

Some Kings Mountain friends I follow on facebook experienced damage from having windows blown out to golf ball sized hail. My mom has called and there are people I know (including my sister’s in-laws) have trees over on their roofs. Mom rode around a little today out through Bethlehem community and talked yards full of down trees and homes of people I know with their windows all blown out.

Mom was unable to get one friends house because the road was blocked, and I even saw one report where Interstate 85 was closed at some point because of tree across the interstate.

Here’s a video from one of the local TV stations, but it doesn’t really capture the scale of the damage as I’m starting to understand it.

[flv]http://deepsand.mastersfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/News14_Residents_clean_up_KM.flv[/flv]

Fortunately, Mom only had a few limbs down in her yard, as the tornado, reportedly an EF 1 storm (winds of 86 – 100mph) seemed to stay further to the west and south. However, it reportedly cut a 16 mile long path.

It’s a bad time there, as a lot of people in that area are out of work.

B. John

Records and Content Management consultant who enjoys good stories and good discussion. I have a great deal of interest in politics, religion, technology, gadgets, food and movies, but I enjoy most any topic. I grew up in Kings Mountain, a small N.C. town, graduated from Appalachian State University and have lived in Atlanta, Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Dayton and Tampa since then.

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