The death toll from Kentucky’s tornadoes has reached 74, but only 8 are at the candle factory

Author: Gabriella Borter

MAYFIELD, Ky. (Reuters) – A tornado swept through six states, killing at least 74 people in Kentucky, officials said on Monday as it opened the doors to victims of those who were unlucky enough to survive their homes and hundreds of people. suddenly the homeless took refuge in shelters.

Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear said the death toll would rise as 109 people were still missing.

But no more dead were expected to arrive from the destroyed candle factory, a company spokesman later said, with recent accounts showing only eight dead. At one time, they feared they were buried beneath dozens of rubble.

About 28,000 homes and businesses in Kentucky still have no electricity, and 1,000 homes have been damaged or destroyed, officials said, with tornadoes shocking people after an unusual blow to the cold weather on Friday.

The dead, including at least six children, ranged in age from 5 months to 86 years.

“You go from grief to amazement for 10 minutes and then you go back,” Beshear said, sometimes drowning.

Among the roller coaster of emotions, it has been difficult for authorities to determine the exact number of dead. The pile of rubbish, interruptions in cell service and the number of people in the shelter with friends and relatives have hampered efforts to identify the dead.

The death toll at Mayfield’s candle factory will be eight, with the remaining 102 workers working at the time of the tornado surviving and having been held accountable for the process, which took three days in the wake of the disaster, the company spokesman said. said Bob Ferguson.

“It’s a great relief,” Ferguson told Reuters. “And now there is a real need to help those who have lost loved ones.”

While Kentucky suffered the weight of tornadoes, including a 227-mile (365 km) long landslide, six people were killed in an Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ 🙂 warehouse in Illinois, four were killed in Tennessee and two. He was killed in Missouri by a nursing home in Arkansas, killing two people in the state.

The U.S. occupational safety watchdog is investigating the circumstances surrounding the collapse of the Amazon facility, and the company said it would cooperate.

Across Kentucky, residents and volunteers worked to provide food, shelter, and any other assistance to people whose homes were damaged, destroyed, or deprived of electricity.

In the adjoining Wingo village, about 90 people, from infants to the elderly, sleep in a green crib filled with a low-ceilinged room and a large standing cross in a community center attached to a Presbyterian church.

Stephen Jennittie, 52, was present with his wife, Christie Bonds, his Chihuahua puppy, Mr. Jingles, and about 90 other Mayfielder residents, have been displaced from their homes since the electricity and heat were removed.

Their survival felt like a miracle where he renewed his religious faith, Jennittie said, remembering how she shook her house amidst the roaring noise.

“I was talking to God and I told my wife that when we get out of here, we’re going to start going to church,” Jennittie, a seventh-generation neighbor in Mayfield, said she could leave a ruined hometown. he no longer knows it.

“It’s not that I grew up in Mayfield.”

‘SINESTE SINEGAN’

Houses all over the village had fallen walls, roofs were missing and trees were uprooted and scattered on the lawns.

With so many homeless people, the Wingo shelter was left with few mattresses on Saturday. But after a phone call, a local furniture store owner brought in more than two dozen mattresses, said Meagan Ralph, a 37-year-old middle school teacher who was appointed as the community outreach director when he volunteered over the weekend.

“Some of them are really shocked and unbelievable, almost in denial. For some, the emotion is unbearable,” Ralph said.

President Joe Biden will try to stir up a visit to hard-hit areas including Mayfield on Wednesday, the White House said after the president declared a major federal disaster in Kentucky on Sunday.

On Monday night, the president declared an emergency in Tennessee and Illinois and approved federal aid for both states.

In Kentucky, as well as in Arkansas and Tennessee, more than 300 people are being taken to Red Cross shelters, and that number is expected to increase. Steve Cunanan, director of the Kentucky Red Cross, said there were hundreds more at temporary park stations in the area.

Others stayed with friends and relatives who saved their homes.

David Hargrov, 62, was examining the debris that was his private law firm in downtown Mayfield. Among the wreckage was the only part of the vault built in the 23-year-old building that remained standing.

It intends to rebuild.

“Either you sit and cry or you move,” Hargrov said. “I’m not going to cry a lot if I can avoid it.”