Washington, D.C. – A devastating swarm of tornadoes ripped through six American states, killing more than 70 people in Kentucky and leaving a trail of destroyed homes and businesses along a path that stretched more than 200 miles, officials said on Saturday.
At least four tornadoes touched down overnight in parts of Kentucky, causing significant damage in more than a dozen counties. The primary tornado travelled more than 227 miles (365 km) across the state, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear said.
The death toll could exceed 100, the governor told a morning news conference.
“The level of devastation is unlike anything that I have ever seen,” Beshear said. “We were pretty sure that we would lose over 50 Kentuckians, I’m now certain that number is now north of 70. It may in fact end up exceeding 100 before the day is done.”
He said 189 National Guard personnel have been deployed to assist with the emergency response.
Some of the worst destruction was in Mayfield, a small city of about 10 000 people in the far western part of Kentucky, where the state converges with Illinois, Missouri, and Arkansas.
About 110 people were inside a candle factory in the area when the tornado ripped through, bringing down the roof and causing mass casualties, Beshear said.
Kyanna Parsons-Perez, who was inside the factory, said the roof collapsed soon after the workers could hear and feel the hollowing winds and the lights began flickering.
“We could feel the wind… then we did a little rock,” Parsons-Perez told NBC. “And then boom everything came down on us.”
Video and photos posted on social media showed brick buildings in downtown Mayfield reduced to rubble, with parked cars nearly buried under bricks and debris.
The steeple on the Graves County courthouse in Mayfield appeared to have been toppled, photos on Twitter showed.
In the early hours, more than 56 000 people in Kentucky were without power, Beshear said. He declared a state of emergency and was deploying dozens of national guardsmen.
The genesis of the tornado outbreak was a series of overnight thunderstorms, including a super cell storm that formed in northeast Arkansas. That storm moved from Arkansas and Missouri and into Tennessee and Kentucky.
“Unfortunately, it produced a couple of deadly tornadoes along the way,” Storm Prediction Centre meteorologist Roger Edward said. “One of them may have been a long-track tornado. The killer tornado was part of that.”
(Reuters)
