Dozens are feared dead as tornadoes hit Kentucky, southeastern US.
A devastating tornado outbreak tore through Kentucky and five other U.S. states, killing dozens of people and leaving a trail of destroyed homes, factories and warehouses along a road that stretched for more than 200 miles, authorities said. Saturday.
At least four tornadoes landed overnight in Kentucky, causing significant damage in more than a dozen counties. The main tornado traveled more than 227 miles (365 km) through the state, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said.
The death toll could exceed 50 people and could reach 100, he told an early morning news conference.
“The reports are really heartbreaking,” he said. “This has been one of the toughest nights in Kentucky history and some areas have been affected in ways that are difficult to put into words.”
Some of the worst destruction occurred in Mayfield, a small town of about 10,000 people on the western tip of Kentucky, where the state converges with Illinois, Missouri and Arkansas.
The Graves County Office of Emergency Management says that if you live in Mayfield and can walk safely, you should head to Fire Station House 1 at 211 E Broadway street. There will be buses to help transport people. @JackKaneWPSD shared these photos of some of the damage there.
About 110 people were inside a candle factory in the area when the tornado tore through, knocking down the roof and causing massive casualties, Beshear said.
Kyanna Parsons-Perez, who was inside the factory, said the roof collapsed shortly after workers could hear and feel the hollow winds and the lights began to flicker.
“We could feel the wind … then we made a little rock,” Parsons-Pérez told NBC. “And then boom, it all fell on us.”
Videos and photos posted on social media, but not yet verified as authentic by Reuters, showed brick buildings in downtown Mayfield reduced to rubble, with parked cars nearly buried under bricks and rubble. The steeple at the Graves County Courthouse in Mayfield appeared to have been torn down, photos showed on Twitter.
In the early hours, more than 56,000 people in Kentucky were without power, Beshear said. He declared a state of emergency and deployed dozens of national guards.
The genesis for the tornado outbreak was a series of overnight thunderstorms, including a super cellular storm that formed in northeast Arkansas. That storm moved from Arkansas and Missouri to Tennessee and Kentucky.
“Unfortunately, it produced a couple of deadly tornadoes along the way. One of them could have been a long-trajectory tornado,” said Storm Prediction Center meteorologist Roger Edward. “The killer tornado was part of that.”
“Rescue teams are examining piles of giant rubble for survivors.”
Damages in Tennessee, Arkansas, Missouri
One person was killed and five seriously injured when a tornado ripped through a 90-bed nursing home in Monette, Arkansas, a small community near the Missouri border, according to Craighead County Judge Marvin Day.
“He just took a direct hit from the tornado,” Day told Reuters. “We were very lucky that more people weren’t killed or injured from that. It could have been a lot worse.”
In Illinois, police said there were “confirmed deaths” after a roof partially collapsed at an Amazon.com Inc warehouse in the city of Edwardsville on Friday night.
Rescue teams were looking for people trapped in the rubble.
Drone footage of the warehouse showed a chaotic scene in the early morning darkness, with many emergency vehicles around the area and rescuers with flashlights combing through the debris.
The roof appeared to have been detached from the building’s metal skeleton.
In Tennessee, severe weather killed at least three people, said Dean Flener, a spokesman for the state’s Emergency Management Agency. Flener said two died in Lake County and one in Obion County, but he had no information on the circumstances of the deaths.
The storms derailed a CSX freight train in western Kentucky, although it said no injuries were reported, the New York Times said.
The National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center said it received 36 reports of tornadoes landing in Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri and Arkansas, and Mississippi.
(REUTERS)
