BOWLING GREEN, Ky. — When a tornado touched down in Bowling Green, Kentucky, in the middle of the night, its violence was centered on one friendly subdivision.
It's a place where everyone waved at one another, and giggling children spent afternoons tooling around on bicycles on the sidewalks.
Fourteen people died in a few blocks. Eleven of them were from a single street, Moss Creek Avenue. Entire families were lost — among them were seven children, two of whom were infants.
All around the neighborhood amid the ruins is evidence of the kids they used to watch climb off the school bus — a red wagon on top of a rubble pile, a mangled blue bicycle, a baby doll.
Neighbors who survived are so stricken with grief they struggle to speak of it.
Melinda Allen-Ray told The Associated Press she will never forget the screams from her neighbors in the aftermath of the storms.
"I heard them — it traumatized me. I think about that each night when I go to sleep, when I do sleep," she said.
Ganimete Ademi told the AP that the neighborhood is a diverse community of families around the world. She herself fled the war in Kosovo in 1999.
"We come from war; this reminds us, it touches the memory of that, where we've been and how we came here," she said. "I turn my memory back to 22 years ago."
At least 88 people in five states were killed in the tornado event late last week. On Tuesday, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said 74 of those fatalities occurred in his state and that more than 100 people are still missing.
