- Title: "That's my front door," Mayfield resident visits destroyed home
- Date: 13th December 2021
- Summary: MAYFIELD, KENTUCKY, UNITED STATES (DECEMBER 13, 2021) (REUTERS) MAYFIELD, KENTUCKY, RESIDENT, POLICE OFFICER IN NEIGHBORING TOWN HICKMAN, JAMES BLAKNEY, 38, LOOKING AT DEBRIS OF HIS HOME (SOUNDBITE STARTING OFF CAMERA) (English) MAYFIELD, KENTUCKY, RESIDENT, POLICE OFFICER IN NEIGHBORING TOWN HICKMAN, JAMES BLAKNEY, 38, SAYING: "That was my... that's my front door. That's my bedroom right there, where my girls, my daughters, stayed there. You know, that's where they hung out in my bed. So." BLAKNEY LOOKING AT DEBRIS OF HIS HOME (SOUNDBITE STARTING OFF CAMERA) (English) MAYFIELD, KENTUCKY, RESIDENT, POLICE OFFICER IN NEIGHBORING TOWN HICKMAN, JAMES BLAKNEY, 38, SAYING: "I actually didn't have the idea that my home was gone, so I didn't find out until later on. I was actually helping out at work, actually, I helped... helped other people, so." MAYFIELD, KENTUCKY, UNITED STATES (DECEMBER 13, 2021) (REUTERS) (MUTE) VARIOUS OF DRONE FOOTAGE OF COURTHOUSE MAYFIELD, KENTUCKY, UNITED STATES (DECEMBER 13, 2021) (REUTERS) DESTRUCTION IN MAYFIELD SEEN FROM VEHICLE (SOUNDBITE STARTING OFF CAMERA) (English) MAYFIELD, KENTUCKY, RESIDENT, POLICE OFFICER IN NEIGHBORING TOWN HICKMAN, JAMES BLAKNEY, 38, SAYING: "So my neighbor, this is her living room right there. That's her car right there. She, like I said, she just had a newborn." (SOUNDBITE) (English) MAYFIELD, KENTUCKY, RESIDENT, POLICE OFFICER IN NEIGHBORING TOWN HICKMAN, JAMES BLAKNEY, 38, SAYING: "You don't know what to feel because you never, never saw anything like this before. We just came out of a pandemic, you know? And so, you know, you just wonder, like, what else? And then, you know, then this. So, this is unreal. It's unreal." VARIOUS OF BLAKNEY'S NEIGHBORHOOD BLAKNEY LOOKING AT HIS HOME (SOUNDBITE) (English) MAYFIELD, KENTUCKY, RESIDENT, POLICE OFFICER IN NEIGHBORING TOWN HICKMAN, JAMES BLAKNEY, 38, SAYING: "I mean, you can see over this parking lot like it's... like it's where all those buildings were like you can see that parking lot. And now you can see clearly all the way over there. You couldn't see that before. Those were all brick, brick buildings." (SOUNDBITE) (English) MAYFIELD, KENTUCKY, RESIDENT, POLICE OFFICER IN NEIGHBORING TOWN HICKMAN, JAMES BLAKNEY, 38, SAYING: "I don't know. We've never faced anything like this before. So it's kind of the stuff that you see in like, you know, on the news, on TV and you don't think it's, you know, your home. So, I don't know, but we'll figure it out. I was fortunate enough to, you know, I made it out, but I don't think everybody did, so. " (SOUNDBITE) (English) MAYFIELD, KENTUCKY, RESIDENT, POLICE OFFICER IN NEIGHBORING TOWN HICKMAN, JAMES BLAKNEY, 38, SAYING: "And so right here were the studs that went up over the complex, and this was actually my living room right here, my living... my kitchen is right here." (SOUNDBITE) (English) MAYFIELD, KENTUCKY, RESIDENT, POLICE OFFICER IN NEIGHBORING TOWN HICKMAN, JAMES BLAKNEY, 38, SAYING: "Oh, I guess, find a place to live, you know? I got two little girls, whatever, you know, I don't know... Obviously, they're not gonna go to school anytime soon. But, you know, just find a place to live and, you know, figure it out from there. So I'm guessing anybody's going to go to school for a while, you know, or go back to work or anything. So, we'll see." MAYFIELD, KENTUCKY, UNITED STATES (DECEMBER 13, 2021) (REUTERS) (MUTE) DRONE FOOTAGE PANNING FROM BANK TO COURTHOUSE MAYFIELD, KENTUCKY, UNITED STATES (DECEMBER 13, 2021) (REUTERS) DAMAGED BANK BUILDING VARIOUS OF COURTHOUSE (LEFT) DAMAGED BANK ROOF DAMAGED AMERICAN LEGION MEMORIAL BUILDING BLAKNEY LOOKING AT HIS HOME (SOUNDBITE) (English) MAYFIELD, KENTUCKY, RESIDENT, POLICE OFFICER IN NEIGHBORING TOWN HICKMAN, JAMES BLAKNEY, 38, SAYING: "There's always hope. There's always hope. That's the American way, man. You always got to... you always got to hope. And then we go from there." SANTA CLAUSE TOY STUCK TO DEBRIS OF BLAKNEY'S HOME (SOUNDBITE) (English) MAYFIELD, KENTUCKY, RESIDENT, POLICE OFFICER IN NEIGHBORING TOWN HICKMAN, JAMES BLAKNEY, 38, SAYING: "Let's pray for us. You know this is a first for us in our area. And you know, just got to pray and move on, and hopefully, you know, we'll get back to normal sometime. I don't know when that will be, but with without hope, you know, we'll never make it." VARIOUS OF MAYFIELD SEEN FROM VEHICLE
- Embargoed: 27th December 2021 17:16
- Keywords: 100 people feared dead 200-mile path Kentucky South U.S. Midwest demolishing homes drone levelling businesse rubble survivors tornadoes
- Location: MAYFIELD, KENTUCKY, UNITED STATES
- City: MAYFIELD, KENTUCKY, UNITED STATES
- Country: USA
- Topics: Disaster/Accidents,United States,Wind/Hurricane/Typhoons/Tornadoes,Editors' Choice
- Reuters ID: LVA001F7VHE13
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: 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.
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 six 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.
Mayfield Fire Chief Jeremy Creason, whose own station was destroyed, said the candle factory was diminished to a "pile of bent metal and steel and machinery" and that responders had to at times "crawl over casualties to get to live victims."
189 National Guard personnel have been deployed to assist with the recovery.
The rescue efforts 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.
(Production: Alan Devall, Aleksandra Michalska) - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
- Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2021. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
- Usage Terms/Restrictions: None