MAYFIELD, United States: Dozens of devastating tornadoes hit five US states overnight, killing more than 80 people on Saturday in what President Joe Biden said was the “largest” hurricane outbreak in history. was one of them.
“It’s a tragedy,” a shaken Biden said in televised comments. “And we still don’t know how many people lost their lives and the full extent of the damage.”
As darkness descended on Saturday, search and rescue officials were helping stunned citizens in the US heartland comb through the rubble of their homes and businesses to search for any survivors.
More than 70 people are believed to have died in Kentucky alone, many of them working in a candle factory, while at least six people died at an Amazon warehouse in Illinois, where they worked the night shift before Christmas. processing orders.
“This event is the worst, most devastating, deadliest tornado in Kentucky history,” Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear said, adding that he fears “we will lose more than 100 people.”
“The devastation is unlike anything I’ve seen in my life, and I have trouble putting it into words,” the governor told reporters.
The western Kentucky town of Mayfield was turned into a “matchbox,” its mayor said.
The small town of 10,000 people was described by authorities as “Ground Zero”, and appeared after the apocalypse: city blocks flattened; Historic homes and buildings were razed to their slabs; Tree branches were stripped from their branches; Cars overturned in the fields.
Beshear said around 110 people were working at the candle factory at the time of the storm, which caused the roof to collapse.
Forty people have been rescued, but it will be “a miracle if anyone else is found alive,” he said.
CNN played up a heartbreaking plea posted on Facebook by a factory worker.
“We are stuck, please, you all help us,” a woman says, trembling as a colleague can hear her voice moaning in the background. “We’re at the candle factory in Mayfield. … Please, all of you. Pray for us.”
The woman, Kayna Parsons-Perez, was saved by being pinned under a water fountain.
“When I walked out of City Hall this morning, this — it looked like a matchstick,” Mayfield Mayor Cathy O’Nan told CNN.
“Our town’s churches have been destroyed, our courtyard … destroyed, our water system is not working at the moment, there is no power.”
“It looks like a bomb has gone off,” Alex Goodman, 31, a Mayfield resident, told AFP.
David Norsworthy, a 69-year-old builder in Mayfield, said the storm blew up their roof and front porch while the family hid in a shelter.
“We’ve never had anything like this here,” he told AFP.
In a parking lot in downtown Mayfield, volunteers were collecting warm clothes, diapers and water for residents.
Beshear said the tornado that blew through Mayfield had hit the ground in Kentucky for more than 200 miles and up to 227 miles in total.
Prior to this, the longest US tornado ever made with land was a 219-mile hurricane in Missouri in 1925. It took the lives of 695 people.
In a display of the terrifying power of the storm on Saturday, when a 27-car train derailed near Arlington, Kentucky, one car blew off a hill 75 yards and another hit a home. No one got injured.
The report puts the total number of tornadoes in the entire region at around 30.
At least 13 people were killed in other hurricane-affected states, including an Amazon warehouse in Illinois, bringing the total toll to 83.
In Arkansas, at least one person was killed after a tornado “significantly destroyed” a nursing home in Monet, a county official said. One more person died elsewhere in the state.
Four people died in Tennessee, while one died in Missouri.
Biden promised the full support of the federal government and said he planned to travel to the affected areas.
Scientists warn that climate change is making storms more powerful and more frequent. Biden said that although the impact on these particular storms was not yet clear, “we all know that when the climate warms it’s more intense, everything.”
The American Red Cross said it was working to provide relief in all five states.
Beshear declared a state of emergency in Kentucky and said several search and rescue officers were deployed along with the National Guard.
According to PowerOutage.com, more than half a million homes were left without electricity in several states.
When another tornado hit an Amazon warehouse in the southern Illinois city of Edwardsville, about 100 workers were trapped inside.
Hundreds of laborers scrambled to rescue the trapped workers.
“We identified 45 personnel who made it out of the building safely, one who was taken to a regional hospital for treatment, and six people who died,” Illinois Fire Chief James Whiteford Edwardsville told a press conference. happened.”
Amazon spokesman Richard Rocha said the safety of its employees was the company’s “top priority.”
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