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U.S. President Joe Biden has provided support to states affected by a devastating tornado that has torn down houses, razed businesses and killed at least 100 people.
Describing that tornadoes are one of the “biggest” storm outbreaks in history, Biden on Saturday approved a declaration of an emergency disaster for the worst-hit state in Kentucky, where at least 22 people were confirmed dead.
“It’s a tragedy,” Biden said, shaking his head. “And we still don’t know how many lives have been lost and the full extent of the damage.”
He added: “I assure you, all that is needed is for the federal government to find a way to do that.”
Powerful converters say weather forecasters are unusual in the cool months, destroying a candle factory in Mayfield, Kentucky, tearing down an old house near Arkansas and killing at least six workers at an Amazon warehouse in Illinois.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said the tornado collection was the most devastating in state history. He said about 40 workers had been rescued at the candle factory and that about 110 people inside had been reduced to a pile of rubbish.
It would be a “miracle” to find anyone else alive under the rubble, Beshear said.
“The devastation is like nothing I’ve ever seen in my life and I have trouble putting it into words,” Beshear said at a news conference. “It’s very likely that more than 100 people will be lost here in Kentucky.”
Videos and photos posted on social media showed the brick buildings in downtown Mayfield flattened, and the parked cars were almost buried under the rubble.
Mayfield fire chief Jeremy Creason, who destroyed his station, said the candle factory had been reduced to a “stack of bent metal and steel and machinery” and that responses sometimes had to “crawl from the victims to get the surviving victims”.
‘Pray for Us’
An employee turned to Facebook for help.
“We’re trapped, please help us,” the woman says, her voice trembling as she hears a colleague moan in the background. “We are in the candle factory in Mayfield. … Please, everyone. Pray for us. ”
The woman, Kyanna Parsons-Perez, was trapped under a five-foot (about 1.5 meter) rubble for at least two hours until rescuers managed to free her.
In an interview with NBC’s Today, he said the event he had ever experienced was “absolutely terrifying.” “I didn’t think I’d get it at all.”
Among those missing at the candle factory was Janine Denise Johnson Williams, a mother of four 50-year-old children, whose relatives were waiting at the site on Saturday.
“It’s Christmas time and he works in a place that makes candles for gifts,” said brother Darryl Williams. “Give up the gift of life to make a gift. We haven’t heard anything, and I’m not assuming anything. But I expect the worst. ”
Timothy McDill is near a Mayfield (Kentucky) tornado-damaged home on Saturday, December 11, 2021 [Mark Humphrey/ AP]
Luke Schockley moves the remains of a tornado inside his parents’ home in Bowling Green, Kentucky, on Saturday, December 11, 2021. [Michael Clubb/ AP]The appearance of the tornado was caused by a thunderstorm at night, including a supercell cell storm that formed in northeast Arkansas. That storm went from Arkansas and Missouri and to Tennessee and Kentucky.
Extraordinary temperatures and humidity created an environment for an extreme weather event at this time of year, said Victor Gensini, a professor of geographic and atmospheric science at Northern Illinois University.
“This is a historic event, if not a generational one,” Gensini said.
Earlier reports confirmed that the rogue had touched nearly 250 miles (400 km), he said, a route longer than the longest tornado on record, tracking about 220 miles (355 km) from Missouri, Illinois and Indiana. March 1925.
Biden told reporters that he would ask the Environmental Protection Agency to consider the role of climate change in feeding storms, and asked questions about tornado warning systems.
“What was the warning? And was he strong enough and did he pay attention? said Biden.
The National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center said it had received 36 reports of tornadoes affecting Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Arkansas and Mississippi.
The collapse of the Amazon store
In Edwardsville, Illinois, fire chief James Whiteford said at least six people were killed when an Amazon warehouse collapsed. About 45 people survived.
But Whiteford said authorities had not yet identified anyone because the staff were in the middle of a shift change when a tornado struck Friday.
“This is a devastating tragedy for our Amazon family and our focus is on helping our employees and partners,” Amazon spokesman Richard Rocha said in a written statement.
The Retail, Wholesale and Retail Store Union, which is trying to organize staff at Amazon’s Alabama facility, criticized the company for keeping the Illinois site open in the event of a weather emergency.
The site of a collapsed roof at an Amazon.com distribution center was hit by several tornadoes in several U.S. states one day in Edwardsville, Illinois, USA on December 11, 2021. [Drone Base/ Reuters]In Monette, Arkansas, one person was killed and five were seriously injured when a tornado broke into a 90-bed nursing home.
“The walls and roofs were torn down,” NBC correspondent Jay Gray told Al Jazeera. “The entire back half of this installation is gone, all that’s left is crushed brick, crushed metal, broken glass. This kind of loss is happening in six communities at the moment. “
Reporting from the scene of the disaster, Gray said most people were still shocked.
“What I’m hearing from the survivors is incredibly shocking,” he said. “It simply came to our notice then. This is not the time of year when we see tornadoes.
“This was when a cold front collided with the warm weather of the season. Now we’re at the back of this, so temperatures are dropping and you have dozens of families across the region wondering not only how warm they will be, but also where they will stay in the long run. ”
The death toll also reached four people in Tennessee and two in Missouri.
As of Saturday afternoon, nearly 99,000 customers in Kentucky and more than 71,000 in Tennessee were without power, according to PowerOutage.US, a website that monitors power outages.
Kentucky officials called on residents to stay off the roads and donate blood, rescuing those responsible for the survivors, and to alert people in the communities who had lost communications.
Brigadier General Haldane Lamberton of the Cantabrian National Guard said: “We have guards who are knocking on doors and controlling people because there is no other communication with any of these people.”
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