US emergency services continued to search for survivors.
US President Joe Biden declared Kentucky a “major disaster” on Sunday night after tornadoes killed dozens of people in that and other states and left towns in ruins throughout the Midwest.
US emergency services were still searching for survivors, but both federal and local officials warned that the death toll, so far 94, could still rise.
At the request of Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, Biden updated a previous emergency declaration to “major disaster,” allowing federal aid for recovery efforts.
Earlier, he called the unusual tornado outbreak in the heart of the United States “one of the largest” in American history.
Beshear noticed that the sniffer dogs were still finding corpses.
“The first thing we have to do is cry together and we will do it before we rebuild together,” the Kentucky Governor said at a news conference Sunday afternoon.
More than 80 people have died in the state of Kentucky alone, many of them workers in a candle factory in the devastated city of Mayfield, Beshear told CNN that “that number is going to exceed 100.”
Troy Propes, CEO of the company that owns the factory, defended his decision not to close it as the storm approached. “We did everything that was supposed to be done,” he told CNN on Sunday.
Later, the governor said that the factory owner believed that more workers had been located and that it would be “quite wonderful” if the number were reduced, but stressed that he could not verify that information.
At least six people were killed at an Amazon warehouse in the southern Illinois town of Edwardsville, where they were processing orders for the Christmas season on the night shift.
Emergency crews worked overnight at both locations, and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) agents and Red Cross volunteers remained on the scene in Kentucky.
But Edwardsville Fire Chief James Whiteford told reporters the operation had shifted from rescue to focusing “just on recovery,” fueling fears that the death toll would rise.
Four people died in Tennessee and two in Arkansas, while Missouri recorded two deaths. Tornadoes also made landfall in Mississippi.
Like a “war zone”
Emergency services were helping stunned residents clear debris amid the devastation.
David Norseworthy, a 69-year-old builder in Mayfield, said the storm lifted the roof and porch of his home as the family hid in a shelter.
“We never had anything like that here,” he told AFP.
On CNN, Michael Dossett, Kentucky’s relief coordinator, conjured up “the vision of a war zone,”
While a Christian church in Mayfield distributed food and clothing to survivors, it also provided space for the county coroner to do his job, Pastor Stephen Boyken of His House Ministries told AFP.
People “come with photographs, birthmarks; now they talk about using DNA samples to identify those who have been lost, “he said.
“It doesn’t look like anything I’ve ever seen”
Storm trackers said the weekend’s storm lifted debris up to 9,100 meters in the air and in Mayfield it appears to have broken a nearly a century record, plowing more than 200 miles on land.
“The devastation is unlike anything I have ever seen,” Beshear said.
In other parts of Kentucky, and also in the states of Missouri, Illinois, Tennessee and Arkansas, similar scenes of destroyed buildings, twisted metal infrastructure, overturned vehicles, broken trees and bricks strewn across the streets were recorded.
Numerous expressions of solidarity arrived from abroad.
Russian President Vladimir Putin offered his “most sincere condolences,” and Pope Francis directed his prayers from St. Peter’s Square to the people of Kentucky.
“New normal”
Mayfield, a city of 10,000 people near the westernmost tip of Kentucky, was declared “ground zero” for the disaster.
Entire blocks were razed, historic houses and buildings destroyed, trees without limbs and cars overturned in the fields.
Interviewed by NBC, Mayfield Mayor Kathy O’Nan seemed to temper the possibility of a miracle: “There is still hope. But right now, what we hope for is a warm shelter for our survivors. “
President Biden stressed that weather events were “more intense” with global warming, but did not establish a direct causal relationship between climate change and the catastrophe that has plunged the country into mourning.
Reports put the total number of tornadoes in the region at around 30.
“This will be our new normal. And the effects that we are seeing from climate change are the crisis of our generation, “FEMA Chief Deanne Criswell told CNN on Sunday. (I)
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