Rescue workers were digging through dilapidated homes and businesses Sunday after a tornado hit Kentucky state that ripped through buildings, including a candle factory that was packed with night shift workers when it was washed away. The governor warned that the death toll from the tornado could exceed 100.
Factory workers sought refuge in what was supposed to be the safest part of the building, but that apparently did not protect them due to the power of the tornado, Gov. Andy Beshear said. The rescue of 40 of the 110 people who were in the building at the time was reported Saturday, but by Sunday, the hope of finding someone else alive had evaporated.
“It will be a miracle if we get someone else out of that. It is now 15 feet (4.5 meters) deep with steel and cars on top of where the roof was, ”the governor told CNN.
Jeremy Creason, Mayfield fire chief and emergency services director, said rescuers had to crawl over the dead in order to get to the living.
An Amazon nursing home and distribution center were also destroyed.
“I can tell you from the reports that I have received, I know that we have lost more than 80 Kentuckians. That number is going to exceed 100, “Beshear noted on Sunday morning talk shows.
The tornado made landfall for more than 320 kilometers (200 miles) in the state.
The tornado “is likely to become one of the largest and most violent in US history,” estimated Victor Gensini, an extreme weather researcher at Northern Illinois University.
The storm was even more notable because it arrived in December, when normally cooler weather limits eddy formation.
The tornado also killed at least six people in Illinois, where it damaged an Amazon facility in Edwardsville; four in Tennessee; two in Arkansas, where a nursing home was destroyed; and two in Missouri.
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