At least 100 people have been killed and massive damage caused by a string of tornadoes that hit the state of Kentucky and neighboring states over the weekend, U.S. authorities said Sunday night.
The powerful storms, which are estimated to have hit several states over an area of 320 to 400 kilometers, caused enormous damage, hitting many police and fire stations.
One of the storms hit a candle factory in a small town in Kentucky, where about 110 people worked. About 40 workers were rescued from the scene, but there is a very serious concern for the lives of the other trapped. As mentioned, Kentucky was not the only state affected by the disaster: a nursing home was destroyed in nearby Missouri and at least six people were killed in a ceiling collapse at an Amazon warehouse in Illinois. The storms also hit Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee.
The dire situation led President Joe Biden to declare a state of emergency in Kentucky. The U.S. president, who is monitoring the situation on the ground, said he would contact the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to look into the role of the climate crisis in “starting” the storms. Needed to help them – and also said he plans to tour the area as soon as the situation allows.
Biden, who described the disaster as “one of the biggest tornado outbreaks in our history,” offered his condolences to all the families killed – and also wondered about the tornado alert system that usually exists in countries affected by such storms: “What warnings were there, and whether they were loud enough them?”.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Bashir said of the disaster that “I have never seen such destruction in my life, I have a hard time putting it into words. It is very likely that there will be more than 100 dead here in Kentucky.” He said about 190 National Guard soldiers would come to the country to help with its recovery. Now, rescue forces will focus mainly on Mayfield, a small town in the southwest of the country where about ten thousand people live. Documentation from the city shows many vehicles being buried under the rubble, and quite a few buildings that have partially or completely collapsed, but the collapse of the rescue stations will hurt the rescue efforts to reach people soon.
Paige Tingle drove for about four hours to reach the collapsed candle factory in an attempt to locate her mother, 52-year-old Jill. “We do not know how to feel, we are just trying to find her. This is a scene of disaster,” she told Reuters.
Bowling Green, which is about 210 miles east of Mayfield, was also hit hard by the storms. Justin Shepherd, a resident of the town, said his cafe suffered relatively minor damage, but that a brewery next to it was completely destroyed. “It looks like a big bomb has exploded here,” he told Reuters. So far, authorities have reported that at least 11 people have been killed in the city.
The big disaster has left about 100,000 people in Kentucky and about 70,000 people in Tennessee left without electricity in their homes. If that was not enough, tens of thousands were left without water available.
“This is a once-in-a-generation event,” Victor Jensini, a professor of geography and atmospheric science at the University of Northern Illinois, told Reuters. According to him, these storms, which usually do not occur at this time of year, occurred due to relatively high temperatures and humidity for the season.
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