East-Central United States | At least 83 dead in “historic” tornadoes

(Mayfield) At least 83 dead, houses flattened as far as the eye can see and tangles of rubble. The provisional toll was devastating Saturday after the central and southern United States swept through a series of tornadoes of unprecedented violence.

US President Joe Biden lamented “one of the worst series of tornadoes” in US history, calling their devastation “unimaginable tragedy.”

In all, at least 83 deaths have been reported across five states.

In Illinois, at least six people died in the collapse of an Amazon warehouse, announced the Edwardsville fire chief, specifying that the rescue part of the operations was now over leaving room for the recovery of the victims.

Employees of the retail giant were working nights to process orders before the holiday season.

Tennessee has recorded four deaths, two people have died in Arkansas, while at least one death is in Missouri.

But it is Kentucky, in the center-east of the country, which is paying the heaviest price after the passage of this devastating meteorological phenomenon, particularly affecting the immense American plains.

After announcing “at least 70 dead” in his state, Governor Andy Beshear said that “by the end of the day or tomorrow”, the death toll would rise to more than 100 deaths, specifying even to expect this. that “the number is rising considerably”. He called on residents to donate blood to treat the injured.

“A pile of matches”

“The devastation is incomparable with anything I have seen in my life, and I find it difficult to find the words to describe it,” he added.

The disaster represents “the worst tornado, the most devastating, and the deadliest in the history of Kentucky,” said the elected.

Mayfield, a town of 10,000 people, was at the epicenter of the disaster.

The heart of the city looks “like a pile of matches,” Mayor Kathy O’Nan told CNN.

“The churches in the center have been destroyed, and the court in the heart of the city has been destroyed,” she added.

Like a bomb

“It’s as if a bomb had exploded in our neighborhood,” Alex Goodman, a resident of Mayfield, told AFP after a trying night in the dark and in anguish.

Across the city, buildings were gutted, metal twisted, vehicles overturned, and trees and bricks strewn across the streets.

In a parking lot in the center, volunteers were hard at work collecting essential items for affected families, noted an AFP journalist on the spot.

They gathered in particular warm clothes, diapers for babies and bottles of drinking water, while the water and electricity distribution networks are no longer operational.

Employees of a candle factory were trapped there after the roof gave way under the strong winds. We still had no news of dozens of employees out of the hundred present.

No one had been able to come out alive from the rubble since the morning, again raising fears of a very heavy toll.

Governor Andy Beshear even spoke of a “miracle” if survivors were now found.

Over a large swath of American territory, the night was terrible. “We got an alert at 9:30 am, we were told 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.

“We’ve never seen anything like it in the area. Where it hits, it demolishes everything ”.

Federal disaster response agencies have already started to be deployed there, said Joe Biden, who pledged that “the federal state will do whatever it can to help.”

400 km

American channels filmed the passage of the tornadoes: black columns sweeping the ground, illuminated by intermittent lightning. About 30 of these storms hit the United States on Friday evening and Saturday morning.

One of the tornadoes traveled more than 400 km, according to the National Weather Service (NWS), while on average these do not exceed more than 6 km in distance.

Police have confirmed at least two deaths in the warehouse.

After deploring the expected tornado toll, Joe Biden stressed that the meteorological phenomena were “more intense” with global warming, without however establishing a direct causal link between climate change and the disaster which mourned Friday evening on country.