By Brian Smith
The Richmond Register
MADISON COUNTY, Ky. — One member of the Madison County EMS ambulance crew who witnessed the tornado that struck Madison County on Friday described the scene as “pretty chaotic.”
Paramedic Matt Graden and emergency medical technician Nate Wyatt were transporting a patient to Danville on Friday afternoon and were near the intersection of KY 52 and KY 1295 when the storm came through.
“Right before I yelled at him to get down, I saw a barn explode,” Graden said.
“Seeing what happened around us, I don’t see how we were as well off as we were,” Graden said. “I think we were probably right in the tornado.”
After parking their ambulance, which escaped with only superficial damage, the duo saw a small boy in a pond behind where a trailer had been destroyed by the storm.
Graden said that as they were responding to the boy, they found his mother trapped under part of the house in the pond.
“Once we found her, we realized the severity of the situation,” Graden said.
Graden and Wyatt worked to keep the woman, Katrina McKee, above water while they freed her from the rubble, and asked bystanders to assist the child.
McKee and the boy were later transported to the University of Kentucky Medical Center in Lexington for their injuries. Two other people, 42-year-old Glenda Charbonnel and 35-year-old Shawn Michael Yarber, were killed when the trailer trapped them in the pond.
“You have a job to do and you just do it,” Wyatt said Monday. “I don’t think I really saved anyone.”
“I don’t think we did anything anyone else wouldn’t have done,” Graden said. “We literally just happened to be at the right place at the right time.”
The National Weather Service upgraded the tornado to an EF3-intensity storm after conducting surveys Saturday of the storm damage across Garrard and Madison counties.
Investigators originally had estimated the storm was an EF2 tornado on the enhanced Fujita tornado damage scale, but upgraded the storm to an EF3 after examining the damage at KY 52 West and KY 1295 near Kirksville, the hardest hit area.
According to a statement from the weather service, the tornado first touched down near Nina Ridge Road in eastern Garrard County, causing minor damage, then strengthened as it crossed into Madison County.
After touching down in Kirksville, the tornado then intermittently touched down across Madison County before causing damage in Waco and then continuing into Estill County.
The American Red Cross is accepting monetary donations, said Kelley McBride, spokesperson for the Madison County Emergency Management Agency.
Donations of other items may be made to Goodwill, McBride said, and the American Red Cross will then issue vouchers to people affected by the tornado to spend on items at Goodwill under the terms of a community agreement.
Madison County Sheriff Nelson O’Donnell said deputies and National Guard personnel would be manning checkpoints and patrolling the subdivisions affected by the tornado until at least Wednesday to prevent looting and vandalism.
“We have had some attempts from people being on sites that weren’t supposed to be there,” O’Donnell said.
Deputies are assisting the Guard personnel because National Guard soldiers do not have arrest powers, O’Donnell said.
Michael Bryant, assistant EMA director and Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program director, said emergency management officials are still assessing some storm damage, and EMA director Carl Richards was conducting a helicopter tour of the damaged areas.
Gov. Steve Beshear will tour the damaged areas today beginning at 11 a.m.
He will tour Adams Place subdivision, the Kirksville community, East Point Subdivision and Waco, if time permits.
Copyright 2009