At least 70 people were killed in a devastating outbreak of tornadoes that ripped through Kentucky and several other US states late Friday and early Saturday, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear said.
Beshear said the death toll could exceed 100.
“This will be, I believe, the deadliest tornado system to ever run through Kentucky,” Beshear said.
The storms hit a candle factory in Kentucky, an Amazon facility in Illinois and a nursing home in Arkansas. Beshear said about 110 people were in the Mayfield factory when the tornado hit.
Emergency vehicles outside an Amazon warehouse in Edwardsville after it was heavily damaged by a storm on Friday. Credit:AP
Kentucky State Police Trooper Sarah Burgess said search and rescue teams were going through the rubble Saturday but didn’t yet have a number for how many have died.
“We just can’t confirm a number right now because we are still out there working, and we have so many agencies involved in helping us,” Burgess said.
The tornado forced a large semi trailer to flip over in Kentucky. Credit:
She said rescue crews were using heavy equipment to move rubble at the candle factory in western Kentucky. Coroners were called to the scene and bodies were recovered, but she didn’t know how many. She said it could take a day and potentially longer to remove all of the rubble.
President Joe Biden tweeted on Saturday that he was briefed on the situation and pledged the affected states would “have what they need as the search for survivors and damage assessments continue.”
Kyana Parsons-Perez, an employee at the factory, was trapped under 1.5 metres of debris for at least two hours until rescuers managed to free her.
In an interview with the morning show TODAY she said it was “absolutely the most terrifying” event she had ever experienced. “I did not think I was going to make it at all.”
Just before the tornado struck, the building’s lights flickered. She felt a gust of wind, her ears started “popping” and then, “Boom. Everything came down on us.” People started screaming, and she heard Hispanic workers praying in Spanish.
Among those who helped rescue the trapped workers were inmates from the nearby Graves County Jail, she said.
“They could have used that moment to try to run away or anything, but they did not. They were there, helping us,” she said. Elsewhere in Graves County, the landscape was a scene of devastation with uprooted trees, downed utility poles, a store destroyed and homes severely damaged.
At least one person died at an Amazon facility in Edwardsville, Illinois, Police Chief Mike Fillback told reporters on Saturday morning. The roof of the building was ripped off and a wall about the length of a football field collapsed.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether the damage was caused by straight-line storms or a tornado, but the National Weather Service office near St. Louis reported “radar-confirmed tornadoes” in the Edwardsville area around the time of the collapse.
A tornado struck a nursing home in Arkansas on Friday night, killing one person and trapping 20 people inside as the building collapsed, Craighead County Judge Marvin Day told The Associated Press.
Five people had serious injuries, and a few others had minor ones, he said. The nursing home has 86 beds.
First responders work outside the Amazon fulfillment centre in Illinois.Credit:AP
Winds of up to 112km/h had been forecast for Friday night, the weather service said.
Matt Beitscher, a meteorologist with the St Louis office, had warned that residents should stay alert for whatever the weather brought.
“A lot of folks like to turn off their alerts when they sleep,” Beitscher said, but it’s not a good idea when unsettled weather takes place in the evening and overnight hours.
It doesn’t help that many people let their guard down to severe weather outbreaks in late fall and as winter approaches. “While it’s uncommon, it’s not unheard of to have severe weather in December,” Beitscher said.
In late October, at least five tornadoes touched down in Missouri and Illinois south of St Louis, including two large twisters with peak wind speeds of about 240 km/h.
The weather has been particularly topsy-turvy this week, with snow flurries sighted in some parts of the region on Tuesday, and then a steady rise in temperatures over the past several days. The forecast for the weekend called for slightly cooler temperatures, followed by another warm-up next week.
Reuters, St Louis Post-Dispatch, AP
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