States still sifting through ruins to ascertain toll from tornadoes
Darryl Johnson didn’t know what his sister did at the Mayfield Consumer Products factory or why she worked nights; he knew only that her husband dropped her off Friday evening and that they never heard from her again.
He stood in a gravel lot next to the giant ruin of metal and wood, which just days ago was the candle factory where his sister, Janine Johnson-Williams, had clocked in for her shift. The factory where he works, 45 miles up the road, shut down when the storms were approaching, Johnson said. He could not find anyone in Mayfield to tell him anything.
“I’m prepared for the worst,” he said. “I’m praying for the best.”
This was the bleak calculation that settled in Sunday across the middle of the country, where an outbreak of tornadoes on Friday night, including one that traveled more than 220 catastrophic miles, left a deep scar of devastation. As work crews dug through ruins and small-town coroners counted the dead, the scale of destruction was becoming clearer.
The death toll from the tornado swarm has been estimated to be at least 90 people, with deaths in Arkansas, Illinois, Missouri and Tennessee. The greatest loss of life was in Kentucky, where Gov. Andy Beshear said in a news briefing Sunday that at least four counties had tolls in the double digits. A dozen people were killed in Warren County, several of them children; in Muhlenberg County, there were 11 victims, all in the tiny town of Bremen. One was 4 months old.
“We’re still finding bodies,” Beshear said. “I mean, we’ve got cadaver dogs in towns that they shouldn’t have to be in.”
On Sunday, a spokesperson for the candle factory told the Associated Press that eight people were confirmed dead and another eight remain missing, but dozens more had been accounted for. While officials initially indicated that 40 of 110 workers at Mayfield Consumer Products had been rescued, the spokesperson said that more than 90 people had now been located.
Beshear told reporters Sunday that the state had not confirmed those figures.
In Edwardsville, Ill., officials released the names of six people killed while working at an Amazon delivery depot that was hit by a tornado. “At this time, there are no additional reports of people missing,” the Edwardsville Police Department said in a statement Sunday. More than 50,000 customers were still without power in Kentucky on Sunday afternoon, and more than 150,000 were without power in Michigan, which was also affected by the sprawling storm. Beshear said there were “thousands of people without homes” in Kentucky, although the sheer amount of devastation made precise figures, at this point, impossible to come by.
“I don’t think we’ll have seen damage at this scale, ever,” he said.
Perhaps most troubling was just how much was still unknown.
In Mayfield, crews were still picking through the wreckage of the candle factory where scores of people remained unaccounted for.
“There have been, I think, multiple bodies,” Beshear said. “The wreckage is extensive.”
But the damage extended far beyond Kentucky.
In Tennessee, at least four people were confirmed dead, with the worst damage reported in the northwestern corner of the state. In Arkansas, one person died at a Dollar General store in Leachville, and a 94-year-old man was killed when the tornado slammed into a nursing home in the city of Monette.
And in Missouri, at least two people died: a woman in St. Charles County and a child in Pemiscot County.