On the sidelines of the desperate search for survivors, aid began to organize on Sunday around a candle factory in the heart of the United States, which has become a symbol of the devastation caused by tornadoes that have killed at least 94 people. in several states of the country.
This exceptional meteorological phenomenon has crossed six states, leaving a trail of destruction for hundreds of kilometers, but it is Mayfield, Kentucky, that these have been the worst.
Several dozen people go missing at the candle factory
The Mayfield Consumer Products candle factory is nothing more than a tangle of twisted joists and sheet metal, stacked several meters high. Equipped with cranes, bulldozers and other mechanical devices, rescuers methodically searched the rubble on Sunday. Some 110 employees were working at the plant Friday night to meet the demand for the holiday season when the tornado destroyed everything. Several dozen people are still missing.
“Words fail” to Jason Riccinto, volunteer firefighter, to describe the devastation at the site. “We dug the rubble yesterday, I spent eight hours there, the night before we worked until four in the morning. I have never seen anything like this in my life, ”he told AFP. With a few others, Stephen Boyken, pastor in a local church, rushed to the scene on Friday evening, to participate in the operations and “to comfort”. “People were screaming, they were scared. I held the hands of those who were stuck, stuck under a brick wall, ”he said.
At the end of the day, the governor of the state, Andy Beshear, assured that the owner of the plant thought he had located employees and that it would be “quite wonderful if the balance sheet was revised down, but he stressed that this information could not be verified. Remember, we are still finding bodies. We have cadaver dogs in towns where they shouldn’t be, ”he added.
A record that should grow heavier
Elsewhere in Kentucky, but also in the states of Missouri, Illinois, Tennessee and Arkansas, there were the same scenes of flattened constructions, gutted buildings, twisted metal infrastructure, overturned vehicles, torn trees and bricks strewn in the streets. Mississippi was also affected.
These states have been crossed by “one of the series of tornadoes the worst ”in the country’s history, lamented US President Joe Biden, calling their devastation“ unimaginable tragedy ”.
Federal disaster response agencies have started to be deployed in the devastated areas. “We will do everything in our power to help,” promised the Minister of Internal Security Alejandro Mayorkas, who visited the site on Sunday. “We will stay until the reconstruction is complete.”
The provisional death toll is already heavy: at least 80 people have died in Kentucky alone, Governor Andy Beshear announced. “The very first thing that we have to do is to mourn together and we will do it before we rebuild together,” he stressed. He said the tornadoes also injured at least 80 people and left thousands more homeless.
This violent meteorological phenomenon particularly affects the vast American plains. On amateur videos taken Friday night, we see these huge black columns sweeping the ground, illuminated by intermittent lightning.
Kentucky swept over 320 km
Kentucky was swept over 200 miles (320 kilometers) by one of the longest tornadoes on record in the United States, according to its governor. The longest that has been tracked on the ground, over 219 miles, occurred in 1925 in Missouri, killing 695 people.
“We had an alert at 9:30 am, we were told that the tornado was coming. It came and went like that, suddenly ”told AFP David Norseworthy, 69, in front of the destroyed porch of his house in Mayfield. “We’ve never seen anything like it in the area. Where it hits, it demolishes everything ”. About thirty of these storms swept across the country on Friday evening.
Another mourning site, an Amazon warehouse, whose roof collapsed in Edwardsville, in the state of Illinois, killing at least six people. Rescuers continued their search there on Sunday.
Tennessee has recorded four deaths, two people have died in Arkansas, while at least two other deaths are to be deplored in Missouri.
The United States facing a “new normal”
The United States is facing a “new standard” with the multiplication of devastating weather events, the head of the department was alarmed on Sunday. the United States Disaster Management Agency (FEMA), Deanne Criswell.
In particular, she underlined the “incredibly unusual” and “historic” dimension of these tornadoes for this season. The month of December is usually rather spared by such events in the United States.
President Biden had stressed to him the day before that the meteorological phenomena were “more intense” with global warming, without however establishing a direct causal link between climate change and the disaster that grieved the country.