Retired St. Matthews firefighter recounts 1974 Louisville tornado 50 years later
It's been 50 years since April 3rd, 1974. But, retired St. Matthews firefighter Rick Albers remembers it like it was yesterday.
"It was kind of a nice a little bit of an unseasonably warm spring day. There had been [tornado] watches all day, but then about quarter after four, I think it was, they issued a tornado warning and all the sirens went off," said Albers. "The skies had gotten a real eerie green color and then pretty quiet until it happened."
He was in his early 20s, stationed at the St. Matthews Fire House just off of Westport Road and Sears Avenue. He still vividly remembers watching the tornado pass by, about a mile north of the station.
"There's a railroad track directly across the street from the fire station. There was a westbound freight train and, you know, they're noisy. And that train was trying its best to slow down and come to a stop. I thought, 'Well, that's odd.' But then we heard another train noise coming and thought, "Oh my God, there's two trains on the same track and we're going have a train wreck and a tornado!' Well, no, the other noise was the tornado coming eastbound," said Albers.
"You could see chunks of debris. I distinctly remember a large chunk of a roof that was ripped off of a house somewhere, that came out of the thing. A big tree, a bunch of debris. And it just did not look like the typical funnel cloud that comes through with a narrow taper. It was wide and you could tell it was really destructive," Albers continued.
About five minutes later, Albers and his team were dispatched to the Indian Hills neighborhood off of Brownsboro Road. That's when Albers was able to see just how destructive the twister had been.
"We turned onto Chenoweth Lane and got to where a little crest of a hill and we could look and see the Second Presbyterian Church and part of it was gone," said Albers. "You could just see the devastation. I had never seen anything like that in my life."
Albers said the St. Matthews Fire Department set up shop at Second Presbyterian Church on Old Brownsboro Road. He remembers being able to see the clear path the tornado took across Indian Hills, Rolling Fields and eventually into Northfield. He described homes being flatted, and debris scattered everywhere.
"We had to walk all the way up where the tornado had cut through because so many trees were down and there's no way to get a fire apparatus through. We just took some hand tools with us and started searching houses," said Albers.
Albers said they were not sure exactly what they would find under all the rubble, but they searched it all.
"I distinctly remember one house that was pretty much gone except for the enclosure for the basement stairs, it was still sticking up in the air and there was rubble piled around it. Somebody was beating on the inside of the little door and we thought we got somebody that needs help. So we moved all the debris out of the way and opened the door. A lady came out into broad daylight and it kind of just took her breath away, she started crying. And then her husband came up the stairs and saw it and just passed out," said Albers.
Three people were killed that day in Louisville. Albers said he responded to two of those calls.
It took weeks to clean up the mess, with dozens of first responders like Albers working together. While Albers said he remembers many things about that day and the days after, one memory that still warms his heart was the amount of good Samaritans who came out to lend a hand.
"The citizenry came out in droves to help people that they didn't even know. [People] giving clothes and food and providing them a place to stay," said Albers. "It was really an awesome thing. Louisville, it always does that, always has. And I think always will."