Ironically, the storm that killed 4 or 5 people at the north end of my county (Laurel County, KY) took out my internet and phone (VIOP) for about 28 hours, shortly after I posted that (I was 12 miles away from the tornado, but the acoustics of the hills around here let me HEAR it on about a minute delay from the distance - I can hear the railroad crossing 8 miles away more clearly than if I was 1000 feet from it). I guess that the trunk connecting the area to the internet got hit, as it would logically parallel US 25 or I-75 (and other natural disasters in that part of the county had caused disruptions before). I later gave a friend a ride home after the front was past, and he ran by where his mom worked (we didn't know yet just how bad things were on the other side of town), and we got 4 pizzas for free, that hadn't been picked up (and the people who ordered weren't answering their phone, either due to the outages, or their being hit by the storm).
Near as I can tell, I had just finished my last BOD run, logged out, and by the time I'd gone to the kitchen for a glass of water and back, the net & phone were down (as were a number of TV stations on my cable, the ones transmitted from Lexington 80 miles to the north). That's when I could hear the sound of the storm through my window, that I'd kept open because insulated glass muffles sound all too well sometimes (having lived through 4/3/72, I have the sound of a tornado imprinted in my mind; I was once woken by a tornado in college, that was miles away).
I got back online too late to get to the event. What did I miss?
As for what happened in the state, the two counties to the northeast that got hit bad were victims of having all their eggs in one basket. They were towns of about 2000, and were their counties' seats, so all their emergency responders ( and cell towers!) were concentrated in the areas hit, and one had the primary road into the county scoured by the tornados. They lost most of their gas stations, and Morgan Co. (where West Liberty was hit) lost their ONLY supermarket, which also sold over half the gas in the county. You know it's bad when the first priority after rescue operations is to "get power to and reopen the grocery store so the county doesn't starve".
Here in Laurel County, by sheer coincidence one of the Lexington TV reporters was in London (probably for a story on the wet/dry election coming on Tuesday), heard BY WORD OF MOUTH that East Bernstadt was being hit, and drove toward the storm. She was on the ragged edge of her cell range to the closest tower still standing, and ended up being the one to first call in the authorities to the disaster area, 20 minutes after the storm went through. EB usually has very good cell coverage, which is why it seemed such a shock to the locals that it took so long to get reported.
