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Authorities say they have little hope of surviving as people pick up the pieces after devastating tornadoes.
U.S. rescuers were desperately rescued on Sunday tornadoes It killed at least 94 people and left the town in ruins, with emergency crews running against time to find dozens still missing at a Kentucky plant.
President Joe Biden called it “one of the biggest” wave of twists, including more than 200 miles (320 kilometers). storm outbreaks American history.
“It’s a tragedy,” Biden said in a statement, adding that he had been harmed by the affected states in a television commentary. “And we still don’t know how many lives have been lost and the full extent of the damage.”
The death toll is expected to rise, with dozens of search and rescue officials scouring the heart of the U.S. for the help of citizens who are being searched through the ruins of their homes and businesses overnight.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said the state’s death toll had risen from 10 to more than 80 on Sunday and said the number would rise. “That number will exceed 100,” Beshear told CNN.
“This is the deadliest tornado event we’ve ever had.” The extent of the destruction is devastating, he said. “I have missing places. I mean, just go. “
Tornadoes torn Leaving the trail of death and destruction across the Midwest and South of the U.S. on Friday night for hundreds of miles.
In the town of Dawson Springs alone, which has a population of about 2,700, the list of missing persons was eight pages long, Beshear said. “The huge and widespread damage is hampering rescue efforts.”
But nowhere did it suffer as much as the small town of Mayfield in Kentucky, where strong winds, weather forecasters say it is unusual in winter, destroyed a candle factory – many were killed – as well as firefighters and police stations.
Across the 10,000-strong town on the southwest corner of the state, houses were leveled or roofs were missing, giant trees were uprooted and street signs were damaged.
Jeremy Creason, chief of firefighters in Mayfielder and director of emergency services, said rescuers had to crawl over the dead to reach the living.
Mayfielde resident Jamel Alubahr, 25, said his three-year-old nephew had died and his sister was in hospital with a fractured skull after she was stuck under the rubble of her home.
“It all happened at the touch of a finger,” said Alubahr, who is now left with another sister in Mayfield.
The tornado was formed by night thunderstorms, including a supercell cell storm that formed in northeast Arkansas. That storm went from Arkansas and Missouri and to Tennessee and Kentucky.
According to initial reports, the twist “is likely to fall like one of the longest violent tornadoes in U.S. history,” said Victor Gensini, an extreme weather researcher at Northern Illinois University.
The storm was even more pronounced because it came in December, when colder weather usually limits tornadoes.
President Biden told reporters that he would ask the Environmental Protection Agency to study the role of climate change in feeding storms.
As Americans faced the horrors of the catastrophe, condolences appeared, and Pope Francis said he was “praying for the victims of the tornado that struck Kentucky.”
Biden’s Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, in a break from strained bilateral relations, said his country “shares the grief” of those who lost loved ones and expressed hope that the victims would quickly overcome the effects of tornadoes.
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