Devastating tornadoes tear through Midwest and South
What happened
Rescue workers across the Midwest and South were digging through collapsed buildings and searching for survivors and bodies this week, after a string of tornadoes ripped through nine states and left behind a trail of devastation. At least 90 people were killed by the storms, 80 of them in Kentucky, and more than 100 people were missing. Meteorologists said the violence of the tornadoes was almost unprecedented for this time of year, with radar showing that debris was thrown more than 30,000 feet in the air. At least 39 tornadoes were recorded. One monster twister with 200-mph winds ripped apart a nursing home in Monette, Ark., killing a 94-year-old resident, before carving a path that was 230 miles long and up to three-quarters of a mile wide across Missouri, Tennessee, and Kentucky—possibly the longest touchdown in history.
In Kentucky, more than 1,000 properties were destroyed; seven children were killed on a single street in the city of Bowling Green. A 128-mph twister obliterated a Mayfield, Ky., candle factory, killing eight people; workers said supervisors had threatened them with dismissal if they left. Six workers at an Amazon warehouse in Edwardsville, Ill., died when a 150-mph tornado smashed into the building. The tornadoes may have been the result of a rare confluence of weather events: almost spring-like temperatures—20 to 30 degrees above normal for December—elevated humidity, and high wind shear. President Biden said the role of climate change in the storms wasn’t clear, but “we all know everything is more intense when the climate is warming—everything.”
What the columnists said
Many of us Kentuckians think we’re “the chosen people when it comes to extreme weather,” said Don Ray Smith in the Louisville Courier-Journal. Our state is normally spared the hurricanes, deep freezes, and wildfires that bedevil other parts of the U.S. But this twister outbreak proves Kentucky is not immune from climate change, which research suggests is causing Tornado Alley to move steadily eastward. We must “brace ourselves for more random rages in the natural world.”
Democrats argue that such tragedies are now “the new normal,” said David Harsanyi in NationalReview.com, and that we must decarbonize the economy to defeat climate change. But the truth is that humans “are safer than ever from extreme climate.” Nearly half a million people worldwide died every year from climate-related disasters in the 1920s; by the 2000s, that number was down to 14,000. That’s because we’ve developed better infrastructure and warning systems, and the death toll will continue to fall as we innovate. “Adaptation is a lot more affordable than overturning modernity.”
This is more than a climate story, said Will Bunch in The Philadelphia Inquirer. The tornadoes “literally tore off the roof and exposed” the reality of low-wage work in America. The candle factory’s night-shifters were told they might be fired if they fled, while a delivery driver in Edwardsville texted his girlfriend that “Amazon won’t let us leave” before he was killed. These people were treated as disposable assets. After mourning the dead, we need to ask “some tough questions about the nature of work in 21st-century America.”