Western Kentucky

EF4 Tornado

The day a monster EF4 tornado roared through Mayfield, Kentucky and surrounding communities, LeadersLink reached out to Mayor Kathy O’Nan. With the help of the Kentucky League of Cities, LeadersLink in January 2022 arranged a virtual meeting between O’Nan, the mayors of other impacted towns and two mayors whose cities had recovered well from similar tornadoes. Louisville, Mississippi Mayor Will Hill and Marshalltown, Iowa Mayor Joel Greer shared their communities’ lessons learned. In February 2023, O’Nan and Madisonville Mayor Kevin Cotton traveled to Louisville to see firsthand how the town had recovered from its 2014 EF4 tornado.

"It's a great idea. The lessons learned and experiences gained through a disaster are so helpful to instruct or guide people. It's just so valuable that experience, and so helpful. There's an art to this."

Mayor Joe Riley / Charleston, SC
"I would love to have had someone saying 'for the next 3 weeks here's what you need to focus on'. That would have really helped me. There really wasn't a lot of information passed on to us about what was coming in the weeks and months ahead. We did our best to anticipate a lot of issues."

Mayor Walter Maddox / Tuscaloosa, AL
"A website would be really helpful. The ability to link to somebody, talk to somebody in a city of 10,000 or 300,000. There is just some consolation to hearing affirmation. Truthfully, the emotional support means a lot."

Mayor Ted Ellis / Bluffton, IN / Former Pres., National League of Cities
"There's a lot of people sit back and say, 'Oh my God! What am I going to do?' At times, you just need someone to talk to about what you need to be doing next."

Mayor Gregg Kennedy / Smithville, MS
"You're going to get the first call. So you'd better have some answers. You have five minutes! You need to know what you're going to do."

Mayor Harry Lewis / Rayville, LA
"If we keep educating folks - however it needs to be done - but if we can keep educating and letting them know what we know now and wished we had known back then, I think we'll all be better off."

Mayor Eddie Favre / Bay St. Louis, MS
"I think it's very important. It gives us an opportunity to take lessons learned and mistakes made and pass them forward and help people make the right decisions and keep from making the wrong ones."

Mayor Brent Warr / Gulfport, MS
"Anytime you tap on experience, that's a whole lot better a lot of times than a bunch of books. If you have somebody that lived it say, this is what you need to do. Especially if it worked out."

Mayor Billy Skellie / Long Beach, MS

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