BOWLING GREEN, Ky. — Imagine having a deadly tornado in your backyard. 


What You Need To Know

  • 17 people died after a tornado hit Bowling Green on Dec. 11

  • 12 of the 17 who were killed lived on Moss Creek Avenue

  • Several homes were destroyed, but many neighbors are returning to deal with the destruction, some just a few houses away from the worst of it

“When it was happening, the house cracked and we didn’t know what to do,” Martha Garcia-Hernandez said. “So we were trying to go under the bed, somewhere safe to stay while it was happening.”

Garcia-Hernandez, 11, tried to take shelter in her home as the storm came through near her home on Moss Creek Avenue in Bowling Green earlier this month.

“When it happened, the windows cracked and we thought it was going to hurt the kids and stuff, but it didn’t actually happen, anything to the actual windows or anything,” she said.

Several homes were destroyed by the tornado on Moss Creek Avenue in Bowling Green (Spectrum News 1/Joe Ragusa)

Just a few houses down, the tornado leveled several homes and killed 12 people. Overall, the storm killed 17 in Bowling Green.

Garcia-Hernandez said the immediate aftermath was jarring.

“We went outside and we couldn’t know how much people lost their lives,” she said. “My friends, pretty much, most of them lost their lives, and it was really terrifying.”

Garcia-Hernandez said her home was battered by some trampolines that got tossed around by the tornado, but after living with her grandparents for a few days, she returned along with the rest of her family after the power came back on last week.

A damaged trampoline sits outside the home of Martha Garcia-Hernandez, who says the trampoline damaged the home during a tornado on Dec. 11 (Spectrum News 1/Joe Ragusa)

Now they’re trying to prepare for Christmas, which she said is going to be painful.    

“When we were walking down, we saw many Christmas trees up, and it was pain for us because they were going to have their Christmas calm and cool and fun, giving gifts to family and stuff, and it was not going to look like that after this,” she said. “Like many Christmas trees were in the road and it looked really terrible when they were picking up stuff.”

And people around Moss Creek Avenue will continue picking up the remains well beyond the holiday.