Of all the disasters that strike, I have never been able to make much sense out of tornadoes.
When you have heavy rains, rivers flood all around them. A wildfire consumes pretty much everything in its path until it runs out of fuel or is extinguished.
Tornadoes are a different beast entirely.
I just don’t get the randomness.
When the meteorological conditions get just right, a tornado will form in one spot but not in another spot a mile away. Sometimes a tornado will level one house but the house next door to it will only have a couple of roof shingles blown off at worst. Other times tornadoes will level pretty much everything in close proximity.
Our thoughts and prayers go out to all of those, who were affected by the tornados that struck Laurel County and Pulaski County over the weekend, and particularly the families of those, who lost their lives.
Now to touch on a few other topics before I conclude this column.
• Thanks to all of our first responders for all that you do both in times of emergencies and otherwise. Many people don’t realize that most of our first responders are actually volunteers, who don’t get paid for what they do, such as members of a local volunteer fire department or rescue squad.
Undoubtedly, these volunteer first responders will probably end up logging hundreds, if not thousands of man-hours aiding with the weekend storms in just Laurel and Pulaski counties to name but a few.
Emergency crews recently logged 1,382.4 man-hours searching for drowning victim John Michael Myrick near the City Dam on Laurel Lake recently. (Did I mention already that most of these people don’t get paid for what they do?)
• Best wishes to Corbin Superintendent Dave Cox, who will retire effective Aug. 1 after 33 years of services in the Corbin Independent School District. Dave has worn many hats during his time at Corbin, including middle school basketball coach, middle school social studies teacher, middle school principal, assistant superintendent, and superintendent for the last nine and one-half years.
Dave has done a great job during his tenure of keeping test scores in the district high and among some of the best in the state.
When the latest round of test scores were released last October, the Corbin Independent School District was one of only two districts in the state to receive a blue rating for all of its schools. A blue rating is the top rating that a school or district can receive. For two consecutive years, it has ranked as the second highest scoring K-12 district in the state.
Corbin High School ranked 8th out of 228 high schools in Kentucky. Corbin Middle School ranked 8th out of 319 middle schools. Corbin Elementary School ranked in the top 12 percent of all elementary schools and Corbin Primary School ranked 19th out 717 Kentucky elementary schools.
During his tenure, Cox has also overseen construction of the new Corbin Middle School, renovation of the old middle school on Kentucky Avenue into Corbin Elementary School, a massive multi-million dollar renovation of the football stadium, installation of turf field for the high school baseball and softball teams, and a new auxiliary gym is currently being constructed at the high school to name but a few of the construction projects that have taken place during his tenure.
Cox leaves some big shoes to fill. It will be interesting to see who succeeds him.
• Best of luck to now former Corbin Tourism Director Nancy Conley, who started her new job as the Berea Tourism Director Monday. She did a great job here and I know she will do a great job in Berea too.
• I had the chance to attend the recent groundbreaking for the 80,000-square-foot, three-story edition for Baptist Health Corbin, which is projected to cost $100 million. This is going to be an impressive building with state-of-the-art equipment, which will reduce wait times in the emergency department, provide mostly private hospital rooms for patients, and greatly expand the ICU and NICU.
It is much needed. Thank you, Baptist Health, for making this investment in our community.
