In an instant, a Kentucky factory was destroyed, leaving dozens of workers missing by Reuters

Author: Cheney Orr

MAYFIELD, Ky. (Reuters) – On the eve of Thanksgiving, Mayfield Consumer Products of Western Kentucky posted photos online, with smiling staff lined up at the buffet table ready to enjoy a special pre-holiday meal together in the factory dining hall.

On Friday night, a candle-making factory held by workers two weeks earlier was damaged by a devastating tornado, in a late shift, with more than 100 workers tired inside. The next morning, 40 of them were rescued; many of the rest were missing.

The tragedy Mayfield Consumer Products, which describes itself as a local and family producer of candles, wax and household perfume products, wanted to expand its workforce by recently announcing job postings on its website and Facebook (NASDAQ 🙂 page.

Search and rescue teams on Saturday combed the wreckage of a tornado-damaged factory west of Mayfield, in a picturesque town near the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, on the southwest corner of Kentucky.

Mayfield, a community of about 10,000 residents in Graves County, was torn down by tornado-torn and demolished buildings, littered with debris, uprooted and bare trees, a twisted road sign and a landscape full of misused service lines.

Among those not found at the damaged factory was a 52-year-old family member identified as Jill Monroe, who was last heard at 9:30 p.m., when the storm hit, according to her daughter Paige Tingle.

Arriving on Facebook on Saturday, Tingle told Reuter that he drove four hours to the plant to find his mother, whose fate is unknown.

“We don’t know what to think. We’re very nervous. We don’t know how to feel, we’re trying to find him,” Tingle said. “It’s a disaster here. My thoughts go out to everyone.”

A worker who survived the collapse transmitted a video directly from inside the trapped man, with his legs under the rubble.

“I’m terrified,” Kyanna Parsons-Perez said as she waited for the rescue in a live video she shared on Facebook. The screams and prayers of other workers, some in Spanish, pierce the almost complete darkness of the fallen factory.

“I didn’t think I would get it,” Parsons-Perez said after he was rescued on Saturday, his birthday, in another video he shared. “My legs, I couldn’t move and I was terrified,” she said, telling the experience that it was the scariest thing of her life.

In an interview with NBC’s “Today” program earlier this day, Parsons-Perez said that among those who went to the aid of the trapped workers was a group of prisoners from a nearby Graves County jail. “They could have tried to escape or take advantage of that moment, but they didn’t. They were there, helping us,” he said.

The account of inmates assisting in the rescue operation could not be verified immediately, but Graves County Jail https://www.facebook.com/gravescountyjailandrccenter said in a Facebook post that “some inmates were working in the candle factory” and lost one employee.

Mayfield’s warning was announced ahead of deadly tornadoes on local television and the town’s siren, U.S. Representative James Comer, whose range includes Mayfield, told CNN in an interview.

He added that workers at the candle factory were protected where they were needed and more people were evacuated than expected.

“I don’t think the death toll there will be as big as we first feared,” Comer said.

There were no immediate casualty estimates for the factory or the surrounding community, one of the worst areas of a storm that worked its 200-kilometer-long destruction route through several counties on Friday night. But Gov. Andy Beshear estimated that at least 100 people were killed across Kentucky.

About 110 people were believed to be inside the candle-making plant when the bend was flattened, and 40 people were rescued on Saturday evening, Beshear told reporters at a news conference.

A Graves County court had previously told CNN that 40 people were left at the plant.