Crying and smell of candles: over 100 feared dead after tornado

Autumn Kirks took off her safety glasses and took shelter, tossing buckets of wax and fragrance aside to make room. She looked away from her boyfriend, Lannis Ward, and when she looked back, he was gone. On Sunday, he was among the scores of people missing and dead in the rubble of the factory.

As the Kentucky governor warned that the state death toll could exceed 100 from Friday night’s tornado outbreak in Mayfield and other communities, Kirk and others were yearning for the news of their loved ones, while rescue efforts blew by the hour. done.

“Not knowing is worse than not knowing now,” she said. “I’m trying to stay strong. It’s too hard right now.”

With rescuers crawling to survive at a disaster site that smelled like scented candles, 40 of the 110 people inside the factory were pulled out soon after being hit by a twister.

But by the time church-goers gathered on Sunday morning to pray for the lost, more than 24 hours had passed, until no one was found alive.

“It would be a miracle if we got someone else out of it. It’s now 15 feet deeper than the steel and the cars where the roof was,” Gov. Andy Beshear said on CNN. “Just tough.”

Kentucky was by far the most affected state in mid-December in an unusual swarm of twisters in the Midwest and South that flattened entire communities and killed at least 14 people in five other states.

“I can tell you from the reports that I know we’ve lost over 80 Kentuckians. That number is going to be over 100,” Beshear said.

“I have cities that are gone, that are just, I mean gone. My dad’s hometown – half of it is not standing. It’s hard for me to describe it. I know people can see the scene.” But in some of these places it goes on for 12 or more blocks.”

He said going door-to-door in search of victims is out of the question in the hardest-hit areas: “There are no doors.” Thousands were without electricity, with afternoon high temperatures forecast only in the 40s.

Kirk said she and her boyfriend were about 10 feet apart in a hallway when someone asked to take cover. Suddenly, he saw the sky and lightning where there was a wall, and Ward had disappeared.

“I remember taking my eyes off him for a second, and then he left. I don’t know where he went, I don’t know,” she said.

Kirk was at a ministry center where people had gathered to inquire about the missing.

“It was indescribable,” Pastor Joel Cooley said of the scene of the disaster.

“It was almost like you were in a twilight zone. You could smell the scent of candles, and you could hear people screaming for help. The smell of candles and all the sirens isn’t something I’ve ever heard of one.” Hoping to experience it in no time.”

The tornado, which made its way to destruction in Kentucky, touched an extraordinary and potentially record-breaking distance of more than 200 miles (320 kilometers). Eleven people have been reported killed in and around Bowling Green alone.

The storm was all the more notable because it arrived in December when normally cooler weather limits tornadoes.

The outbreak also killed at least six people in Illinois, where an Amazon distribution center in Edwardsville was affected; four in Tennessee; two in Arkansas, where a nursing home was destroyed and the governor said workers protected residents with their bodies; and two in Missouri.

Debris from destroyed buildings and cut trees covered the ground in Mayfield, a city of about 10,000 in western Kentucky. Bent sheet metal, downed power lines and damaged vehicles are parked on the roads. Windows were blown out and the roofs of buildings that were still standing were torn down.

In the shadow of their broken churches, two churches in Mayfield came together on Sunday to pray for the lost. Members of First Christian Church and First Presbyterian Church met in a parking lot surrounded by piles of rubble, broken bricks and metal.

Laura McClendon said, “Our small town will never be the same, but we are resilient. We will get there, but it is going to take a long time.”

This story has been published without modification in text from a wire agency feed. Only the title has been changed.