MAYFIELD, UNITED STATES: Dozens of devastating tornadoes roared through six US states overnight, leaving more than 80 people dead and dozens missing Saturday in what President Joe Biden said was likely to be “one of the largest” storm outbreaks in American history.
“It’s a tragedy,” a shaken Biden said in televised comments. “And we still don’t know how many lives are lost and the full extent of the damage.”
As the cold night fell Saturday, scores of search and rescue officials were helping stunned citizens across the US heartland sift through the rubble of their homes and businesses, desperately searching for any more survivors.
More than 70 people are believed to have been killed in Kentucky alone, many of them were workers at a candle factory, while at least six died in an Amazon warehouse in Illinois where they were on the night shift processing orders ahead of Christmas.
“This event is the worst, most devastating, most deadly tornado event in Kentucky’s history,” said state governor Andy Beshear, adding he fears “we will have lost more than 100 people.”
“The devastation is unlike anything I have seen in my life, and I have trouble putting it into words,” he told reporters.
Beshear has declared a state of emergency in the state.
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 leveled; historic homes and buildings beaten down to their slabs; tree trunks stripped of their branches; cars overturned in fields.
