HELLISH SEARCH FOR SURVIVORS
MAYFIELD: The desperate search for survivors of one of America’s most deadly tornado disasters continued into a second day as rescuers combed through mountains of debris across six US states.
As the death toll climbed above 100, including at least 94 in Kentucky, dozens of people were still missing and hopes of finding them alive were slipping away.
In Kentucky, which bore the brunt of the disaster, the town of Mayfield was almost completely destroyed.
As recovery efforts continued, the number of dead was expected to rise significantly.
A candle factory, where 110 workers were on overnight shifts to meet Christmas demand, was flattened by the storm. Only 40 people have so far been pulled alive from the rubble, with dozens believed to be dead.
Elsewhere, six Amazon warehouse workers are known to have been killed when a tornado hit a facility in Edwardsville, Illinois, and trapped 100 workers. Among those confirmed to have died is Clayton Hope, a 29-yearold maintenance worker and US Navy veteran who tried to warn his colleagues.
“He just said he needed to tell someone that (the tornado) was coming,” his mother, Carla Cope, said.
“He had a big heart and he was a very sweet man.”
Mr Hope’s mother went to the warehouse after the storm passed on Friday, looking for
her son. She learned hours later from authorities that he didn’t make it.
“(It was) gut-wrenching, nauseating and heartbreaking,” Ms Cope said.
There was anger towards Amazon and its billionaire founder Jeff Bezos over the company’s strict policy of not allowing staff to have mobile phones at work.
If they had their phones, they might have received a warning of the approaching tornado and survived.
It came as Americans were told devastating tornadoes in the country’s rural midwest were “the new normal”.
Deanne Criswell, the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, blamed them on
climate change. “This is going to be our new normal,” she said. “The effects that we are seeing from climate change are the crisis of our generation. It is incredibly unusual … it is also historic.”
The winds were fuelled by unseasonably warm weather in the south and midwest, with one tornado beating a 96-year-old record, covering a distance of at least 360km.
Asked if the storms had anything to do with climate change, President Joe Biden said: “Well, all that I know is that the intensity of the weather across the board has some impact as a consequence of the warming of the planet and the climate change.”