- Title: Aftermath in Kentucky: "I've lost it all again"
- Date: 12th December 2021
- Summary: AERIAL DRONE FOOTAGE OF DERAILED TRAIN (MUTE)
- Embargoed: 26th December 2021 03:55
- Keywords: Kentucky Tornado aftermath loss
- Location: MAYFIELD AND EARLINGTON, KENTUCKY, UNITED STATES
- City: MAYFIELD AND EARLINGTON, KENTUCKY, UNITED STATES
- Country: USA
- Topics: Disaster/Accidents,United States,Wind/Hurricane/Typhoons/Tornadoes,Editors' Choice
- Reuters ID: LVA004F7QEFK7
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text:66-year-old Mayfield, Kentucky resident Janet Kimp has lost if all before -- a husband, a home.
"I lost everything again," she told Reuters at what was left of her home.
Kentucky is a landscape of loss. At least 100 people were feared dead in Kentucky after a swarm of tornadoes tore a 200-mile path through the U.S. Midwest and South, demolishing homes, leveling businesses and setting off a scramble to find survivors beneath the rubble, officials said Saturday (December 11).
The powerful twisters, which weather forecasters say are unusual in cooler months, destroyed a candle factory and the fire and police stations in a small town in Kentucky, ripped through a nursing home in neighboring Missouri, and killed at least two workers at an Amazon warehouse in Illinois.
Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear said the collection of tornadoes was the most destructive in the state's history. He said about 40 workers had been rescued at the candle factory in the city of Mayfield, which had about 110 people inside when it was reduced to a pile of rubble. It would be a "miracle" to find anyone else alive under the debris, Beshear said.
"The devastation is unlike anything I have seen in my life and I have trouble putting it into words," Beshear said at a press conference. "It's very likely going to be over 100 people lost here in Kentucky."
Beshear said 189 National Guard personnel have been deployed to assist with the recovery. The rescue efforts will focus in large part on Mayfield, home to some 10,000 people in the southwestern corner of the state where it converges with Illinois, Missouri and Arkansas.
The genesis of the tornado outbreak was a series of overnight thunderstorms, including a supercell storm that formed in northeast Arkansas. That storm moved from Arkansas and Missouri and into Tennessee and Kentucky.
Unusually high temperatures and humidity created the environment for such an extreme weather event at this time of year, said Victor Gensini, a professor in geographic and atmospheric sciences at Northern Illinois University.
(Video: Cheney Orr, Production: Deborah Lutterbeck) - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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