US Tornadoes: At least 70 people have been killed in Kentucky alone. (File)
Mayfield:
Alex Goodman knew something terrible was going on outside, when her home was shaken by a tornado that tore through western Kentucky “like a ‘bomb’, killing dozens and changing forever. far the face of her town.
“You can definitely feel the house shaking. The sheer force of the wind and rain is unbelievable,” said 31-year-old Mayfield resident and mother of one infant.
Fortunately alive after the chaos struck, Goodman and her husband climbed the stairs from their basement and opened the front door, facing disaster.
“It looks like a bomb went off in our community,” Goodman told AFP on Saturday, hours after the disaster.
“We live in a very historic community, and all of our downtown history is gone,” she lamented. “We have four historic churches, our courts, our banks – they’re all gone.”
In drone footage posted by hurricane hunter Brandon Clement, Mayfield appears post-apocalyptic: city blocks razed, with almost nothing salvageable; houses were demolished; the trunk is stripped of branches; Overturned car in the field.
The people of Kentuck were reeling from the deadliest tornado in state history. At least 70 people have been killed in Kentucky alone, and the number could surpass 100, Governor Andy Beshear said.
About two dozen tornadoes tore through five states overnight in central America, ravaging several towns, leaving more than a quarter of a million homes without power and causing electricity, the Red Cross said. a large-scale rescue and recovery operation.
‘Ground zero’
Officials have described Mayfield – a city of 10,000 people with a picturesque downtown that has appeared in Hollywood movies – as the “zero point” of the devastating storm.
Some structures have collapsed completely, while one barn is barely standing, wobbling but defying gravity.
The Mayfield consumer product candle factory, where employees work overtime for the holidays, is a mountain of twisted metal and debris.
Ivy Williams was desperately searching for his wife, Janine, who he said was among about 100 people who were working in the factory when the tornado hit Friday night.
“My daughter called me and told me the roof of the building had fallen off, and I was rushing over here. When I got over here, it was like here. I mean, it wasn’t that. a building, I didn’t “I don’t know what it was,” Williams told CNN.
“And then I started helping as much as I could. I caught two people – a woman and a boy. And from then on, I called my wife’s name, Janine Williams, and I didn’t. no get a response,” he added.
One of his wife’s colleagues later told him “she was on the list, that they pulled her out,” Williams said. “But I don’t know where they took her.”
Emergency workers in patchy yellow gear ran through the candle factory ruins in search of survivors, but Beshear prepared Mayfield residents for the worst.
“We’re going to lose a lot of lives in that facility,” the governor said. “It was a very dire situation.”
Pandemonium’s ‘Four Seconds’
About 65 miles (105 km) northeast, the smaller Kentucky town of Dawson Springs was also catastrophically affected, with photos showing block after block of destruction.
Resident Lori Wooton was at her daughter’s home when the tornado unleashed its fury in an instant.
“It didn’t seem to last that long… three or four seconds and then it was gone,” Wooton told CNN.
“But then when we went out and started looking at the damage, it was unbelievable.”
(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from an aggregated feed.)
