East-Central United States | Tornado toll exceeds 70 dead

(Mayfield) Flattened houses as far as the eye can see, tangles of rubble, and at least 70 dead in Kentucky alone. The Americans were stunned on Saturday by the violence and the number of tornadoes that swept through the center and south of the country.

President Joe Biden spoke of an “unimaginable tragedy” and assured that the federal administration was working in concert with the governors of the affected states.

In all, at least 78 deaths have been reported across five states.

Tennessee has three deaths, two people have died in Arkansas, officials and local media say. In Illinois, two other people also died in an Amazon warehouse collapse, while at least one death is in Missouri.

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

“We were pretty sure we were going to lose over 50 Kentuckians. I am now sure that number is over 70, and it could well exceed 100 by the end of the day, ”State Governor Andy Beshear said at a press conference.

“Ground zero”

“It is indescribable, the level of devastation is incomparable to anything I have ever seen”, he added.

“This will be, I think, the deadliest series of tornadoes to ever pass through Kentucky,” said the elected official.

Mayfield, a town of 10,000 people, appears to have been at the epicenter of the disaster.

“The city has suffered the hardest blows. The devastation there is massive, “said Michael Dossett, a local relief official, interviewed on CNN.

He mentioned a “ground zero”, an expression used to describe the ruins of the World Trade Center after the attacks of September 11, 2001 in New York.

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.

The people of Mayfield were proud of the buildings that gave their small town a historic character. “They are all destroyed,” she laments.

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

Employees of a candle factory were trapped there after the roof gave way under the strong winds.

“At first, we could just hear the rain. And then, suddenly, there was a very loud noise, like that of a train, ”Lori Wooton, a resident of Dawson Springs, Kentucky, told CNN.

“It didn’t seem like long… three or four seconds and it was gone. But then we went out to see and the damage was unimaginable, ”she continued.

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.

Further northwest, in Illinois, strong winds partially tore off the roof of a storm-ravaged Amazon warehouse. These are employees of the distribution giant who worked nights to process orders before the holiday season.

“Prayers”

Police confirmed at least two deaths in the warehouse and the local emergency management agency cited “many people trapped” in the building.

The emergency services worked until the early hours of Saturday to try to free these people from the installation, a third of which is nothing more than rubble.

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker said he addressed his “prayers to the people of Edwardsville.”

“We are deeply saddened by the news that members of our Amazon family have died as a result of the storm in Edwardsville,” Kelly Nantel, Amazon spokesperson, told AFP.

In Arkansas, one person was killed and 20 were trapped in a nursing home. But rescuers managed to evacuate most of the residents.

Climate change is increasing the magnitude and frequency of the storms that are already plaguing the United States, scientists say.