‘At least 100 dead’, apocalyptic scenes, after US hit by wave of tornadoes

Rescuers were desperately searching for survivors on Sunday after dozens of devastating tornadoes tore through six US states, leaving more than 100 people feared dead, dozens missing and towns in ruin.

US President Joe Biden called the wave of tornadoes that tore a 320km (200 mile) path through the US Midwest and South on Friday night “one of the largest” storm outbreaks in American history.

“It’s a tragedy,” a shaken Biden, who pledged support for the affected states, said in televised comments. “And we still don’t know how many lives are lost and the full extent of the damage.”

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Scores of search and rescue officials were helping stunned citizens across the US heartland sift through the rubble of their homes and businesses overnight.

Authorities said they had little hope of finding survivors beneath the rubble. Instead rescuers, volunteers and residents were due to begin the long process of recovering what they could and clearing out fields of debris.

Kentucky residents, many without power, gas or even a roof over their heads, woke on Sunday to a landscape scarred by a string of powerful tornadoes that officials fear killed at least 100 people while obliterating buildings, homes and anything else in their way.

More than 80 people were believed to have been killed in Kentucky alone, many of them workers at a candle factory, the state’s governor Andy Beshear said on Sunday as he raised the confirmed toll by 10 fatalities.

Six workers were killed at an Amazon warehouse in Illinois. A nursing home was struck in Missouri. More than 70,000 people were left without power in Tennessee.

“This event is the worst, most devastating, most deadly tornado event in Kentucky’s history,” said Beshear, adding he fears “we will have lost more than 100 people”.

He declared a state of emergency in the state and said widespread damage was making rescue efforts a challenge. “I’ve got towns that are gone,” Beshear told CNN.

Deanne Criswell, administrator of the US Federal Emergency Management Agency, said the rescue effort was ongoing and there was still hope of finding survivors.

The western Kentucky town of Mayfield was reduced to “matchsticks”, its mayor Kathy O’Nan told CNN.

The small town of 10,000 people was described as “ground zero” by officials, and appeared post-apocalyptic: city blocks levelled; historic homes and buildings beaten down to their slabs; tree trunks stripped of their branches; cars overturned in fields.

Mayfield resident Jamel Alubahr, 25, said his three-year old nephew died and his sister was in hospital with a fractured skull after being stuck under the rubble of a three-story home. “It all happened in the snap of a finger,” said Alubahr.

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Kentucky governor Beshear said there were some 110 people working at Mayfield’s candle factory when the storm hit, causing the roof to collapse. CNN played a heart-rending plea posted on Facebook by a factory employee.

“We are trapped, please, y’all, get us some help,” a woman says, her voice quavering as a colleague can be heard moaning in the background.

“We are at the candle factory in Mayfield … Please, y’all. Pray for us.”

The woman, Kyanna Parsons-Perez, was rescued after being pinned under a water fountain.

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“It looks like a bomb has exploded,” 31-year-old Mayfield resident Alex Goodman said.

David Norseworthy, a 69-year-old builder in the town, said the storm blew off his roof and front porch while the family hid in a shelter. “We never had anything like that here,” he said.

Janet Kimp, 66, and her son Michael, 25, survived by hunkering down in their hallway, the only part of the house where the roof or the walls did not come crashing down, she said on Saturday.

In a car park in downtown Mayfield, volunteers were collecting warm clothes, diapers and water for residents.

The path of devastation was about 365km (227 miles), Beshear said. Previously, the longest a US tornado has ever tracked along the ground was a 352km storm in Missouri in 1925 which claimed 695 lives.

In one demonstration of the storms’ power on Saturday, when winds derailed a 27-car train near Earlington, Kentucky, one car was blown 75 metres up a hill and another landed on a house. No one was hurt.

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Reports put the total number of tornadoes across the region at around 30.

At least 13 people were killed in other storm-hit states, including at an Amazon warehouse in the southern Illinois city of Edwardsville, with around 100 workers believed to have been trapped inside.

“We identified 45 personnel who made it out of the building safely, one who had to be airlifted to a regional hospital for treatment, and six fatalities,” Edwardsville fire chief James Whiteford told reporters.

But he said the operation had turned from rescue to focus “only on recovery”, fuelling fears the toll could yet rise.

It was unclear how many workers were still missing as Amazon did not have an exact count of people working in the sorting and delivery centre at the time the tornadoes hit, Whiteford said.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said he was “heartbroken” at the deaths, tweeting: “our thoughts and prayers are with their families and loved ones”.

In Arkansas, at least one person died when a tornado “pretty much destroyed” a nursing home in Monette, a county official said. Another person died elsewhere in the state. Four people died in Tennessee, while one died in Missouri. Tornadoes also touched down in Mississippi.

Biden promised the full assistance of the federal government and said he planned to travel to the affected areas.

He said that while the impact of climate change on these particular storms was not yet clear, “we all know everything is more intense when the climate is warming, everything”.

Biden said he would ask the Environmental Protection Agency to examine what role climate change may have played in fuelling the storms.

Meteorologist Jeff Masters with Yale Climate Connections said he was “watching the radar last night and I was saying, ‘Wait a second, this is December. How is this happening in December?’ This is the kind of thing you would only see at the height of the season, you know, March, April, May”.

More than half a million homes in several states were left without power, according to PowerOutage.com.

Additional reporting by Reuters