LAUREL COUNTY, Ky. — The increasingly loud roar of the wind sent Barbara and Burton Bentley inside the bathroom of their doublewide mobile home just after 7 p.m. on March 2. He told his wife to get inside because a tornado was approaching quickly and the couple had no time to escape.

“We went in the little bathroom (in the center of the home) because it didn’t have any windows. I got in the bathtub and he sat on the edge when it hit. It gently picked us up and gently sat us back down,” recalled Barbara Bentley. “And I mean gently.”

But emerging from the bathroom showed a picture of devastation that was anything but gentle. Splintered wood, insulation, boards sticking through the walls and debris lying everywhere is what greeted the couple as they peered into total darkness to view the damage. While their porch remained, gone was the roof of the porch and their home, as were two outbuildings and their barn.

Twisted and mangled in the lower part of their yard was the swing set for their grandchildren, while the trampoline was literally wrapped around a nearby tree.

While the memories of that fateful evening will never fade in Bentley’s mind, she is now dealing with rebuilding her life.

Bentley was one of the lucky ones who had insurance on their mobile home on Bentley Road, the area of the East Bernstadt community directly off north U.S. 25 that runs parallel with  Interstate 75. It is the home place of Bentley’s husband’s family and was the home sites of several of his other family members.

Now, two months after the devastation that affected so many in the local area, the Bentleys are getting their lives back in order. Now in their new double wide, the Bentleys were fortunate enough to be able to maneuver a ‘replacement’ for their three-year-old double wide that was destroyed in the storm. With a little more of the insurance money, Burton decided to construct a storm shelter, with plans to rebuild a storage area on top of it, giving the couple a place of refuge should they ever be in the path of a tornado again.

With boxes still on the porch and throughout the house, Bentley said she is settling back into her regular routine in her new home, thankful she survived the storm that took the lives of her husband’s sister, Ethel Pruitt, and his niece, Mary Ann Pruitt, who lived just yards away. Ethel Pruitt was killed instantly after the tornado picked up their mobile home which landed about 100 feet away. Her daughter, Mary Ann, had to be extricated from the rubble and remained in the University of Kentucky Medical Center until her death exactly three weeks after the tornado.

Though losing family members has been devastating for the Bentley family, Barbara considers herself lucky in more respects than just surviving the storm. Her husband, Burton, received immediate help from his employer, Jerry Greer. The Greer family sent and loaned backhoes and dozers to help with the cleanup, not just for the Bentley family but for all areas of the devastation.

A friend loaned the couple their travel trailer so they could remain on their property while the cleanup efforts were underway.

With their new home in place and the finishing touches to the porch being added this week, Bentley has already begun her landscaping and looks forward to construction of the new outbuildings.

“When we get the barn and buildings back, it will be home again,” she said.



njohnson@sentinel-echo.com