At least 64 people, including six children, lost their lives in Kentucky after a string of tornadoes tore through six states, with power still out for thousands and strangers welcoming survivors who lost everything into their homes.
While the death toll from the tornadoes was lower than initially feared, Kentucky governor Andy Beshear said he expects it to increase as rescue workers sift through a flattened landscape of twisted metal, downed trees and homes reduced to rubble.
“It may be weeks before we have counts on both deaths and levels of destruction,” Mr Beshear told reporters, adding that the victims ranged in age from five months to 86 years old, and that 105 people were still unaccounted for.
Across Kentucky, neighbours and volunteers worked to house, feed and offer any other assistance to those left homeless by the storm.
President Joe Biden said he will survey tornado damage in Kentucky during a visit to the state on Wednesday. "This is a narrow path and the devastation is just stunning," Mr Biden told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday, showing them maps of the damage after a briefing from federal emergency and homeland security officials.
He declined to pin the blame on climate change, pointing also to the weather pattern in the Pacific Ocean. “We can’t say with absolute certainty it was because of climate change,” he said.
Mr Biden on Sunday declared a major federal disaster in Kentucky. The move will unlock federal aid for temporary housing, home repairs, and loans to help those with uninsured property losses.
While the National Weather Service has yet to conclude the strength of the twisters that tore through Mayfield, Mr Beshear said they were likely so powerful that he no amount of training or advanced notice would have made a difference.
“You can have the warnings, but what do you do?,” he asked. “I mean how do you tell people that there’s going to be one of the most powerful tornadoes in history and it’s going to come directly through your building?”
Candle factory
Mr Beshear said the death toll from Mayfield’s collapsed candle factory may be lower than officials had first thought. He said authorities were trying to confirm information from the owners of the Mayfield Consumer Products LLC factory that eight people had perished at the site when the storm hit late on Friday, and that only a small number of the 110 workers were unaccounted for.
“We feared much, much worse,” he said. “I pray that it is accurate.”
Kentucky’s emergency management director Michael Dossett said 28,000 homes and businesses remained without power.
More than 300 National Guard personnel and scores of state workers were distributing supplies and working to clear roads so that mountains of debris can be removed in the aftermath of the disaster, the governor said.
He added that authorities were coordinating an “unprecedented amount of goods and volunteers”. Mr Beshear, at times choking up, said the search, rescue and recovery process has been an emotional roller coaster for all those involved, including him.
“You go from grief to shock to being resolute for a span of 10 minutes and then you go back,” he said.
While Kentucky was hardest hit, six workers were killed at an Amazon warehouse in Illinois after the plant buckled under the force of the tornado, including one cargo driver who died in the bathroom, where many workers told Reuters they had been directed to shelter.
A nursing home was struck in Arkansas, causing one of that state’s two deaths. Four were reported dead in Tennessee and two in Missouri. – Reuters/Bloomberg