(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.
US President Joe Biden lamented “one of the worst tornado series” in US history, calling the devastation “unimaginable tragedy.”
In all, at least 79 deaths have been reported across five states.
Tennessee has four, two people have died in Arkansas, officials and local media say. In Illinois, two other people have also died in an Amazon warehouse collapse, while at least one is dead in Missouri.
But Kentucky, in the central-east of the country, records a horrific toll after the passage of this devastating meteorological phenomenon, which affects the vast American plains.
PHOTO FROM THE TWITTER ACCOUNT @CHARLESPEEKWX
Mayfield homes damaged by tornado.
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.
PHOTO DYLAN T. LOVAN, ASSOCIATED PRESS
A semi-trailer was overturned by the sales force in Bowling Green, Ky.
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.
PHOTO MICHAEL GORDON, STORM CHASING VIDEO VIA REUTERS
Mayfield view
“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
PHOTO TIMOTHY D. EASLEY, ASSOCIATED PRESS
A Mayfield grocery store was damaged by the tornado.
“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.
On a parking lot in the center, volunteers were hard at work collecting essential items for affected families, noted an AFP journalist on the spot.
PHOTO JOHN AMIS, FRANCE-PRESSE AGENCY
Rescuers dig through the rubble of a candle light factory in Mayfield, Ky.
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.
PHOTO CHRIS PHILLIPS, MAVERICK MEDIA GR VIA REUTERS
An Amazon warehouse in Edwardsville, Illinois sustained significant damage.
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.
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.
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.