Kentucky begins difficult recovery
Guard deployed; governor warns of higher death toll
MAYFIELD, Ky .— Workers, volunteers and members of the National Guard fanned out in areas of Kentucky slammed by a series of tornadoes to begin the long process of recovery, including replacing thousands of damaged utility poles, delivering bottles of drinking water and continuing to search for the dead.
The tornado outbreak Friday that killed at least 88 people in five states — 74 of them in Kentucky — cut a path of devastation that stretched from Arkansas, where a nursing home was destroyed, to Illinois, where an Amazon distribution center was heavily damaged.
In Kentucky, Gov. Andy Beshear said the death toll could grow as authorities continued to work around debris that slowed recovery efforts. Nearly 450 National Guard members have been mobilized in the state, and 95 of them are searching for those presumed dead.
“With this amount of damage and rubble, it may be a week or even more before we have a final count on the number of lost lives,” the governor said.
While Kentucky took the worst damage from the deadly tornado- producing storm system that slammed the region, Tennessee saw at least 11 tornadoes and four storm deaths.
On Tuesday, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee announced that President Joe Biden has granted an emergency declaration for nine counties in the state that suffered tornado damage.
Lee said he will seek a major disaster declaration for some counties once local officials complete their assessments of the storm damage. That declaration would make FEMA’s public assistance and individual assistance programs available in the declared counties.
In Kentucky, authorities said the sheer level of destruction was hindering their ability to tally the damage. Still, efforts turned to repairing the power grid, sheltering those whose homes were destroyed and delivering supplies.
Across the state, nearly 25,000 homes and businesses were without electricity on Tuesday, down slightly from the day before, according to power outage. us. More than 10,000 homes and businesses had no water as of Monday, and another 17,000 are under boil- water advisories, Kentucky Emergency Management Director Michael Dossett told reporters.
A fund set up by the state collected $ 6 million in donations, according to the governor. Kentucky first lady Britainy Beshear launched a Christmas toy drive for children affected by the storm. She is asking for unwrapped toys, books, and gift cards of $ 25 that will be distributed to families in need.
State and local officials said it could take years for some of the hardest- hit areas to fully recover.
“This again is not going to be a week or a month operation, folks. This will go on for years to come. This is a massive event,” Dossett said.
Five twisters hit Kentucky in all, including one with an extraordinarily long path of about 200 miles, authorities said.
In addition to the deaths in Kentucky and Tennessee, the tornadoes also killed at least six people in Illinois, where the Amazon distribution center in Edwardsville was hit; two in Arkansas, where a nursing home was destroyed; and two in Missouri.
The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration announced Monday that it has opened an investigation into the collapse of the Amazon warehouse in Illinois.
An employee of t he Kentucky candle factory where eight workers were killed by a tornado said Tuesday that a supervisor threatened her with written disciplinary action if she went home early because storms were approaching.
Haley Con der, who worked at the Mayfield Consumer Products factory on and off for 10 years, also questioned why the company did not encourage workers to go home or at least give them a better understanding of the danger between a first tornado siren around 6 p.m. Friday and another one around 9 p.m ., shortly before the tornado hit.
“They ( the company) had from 6 o’clock to 9 o’clock to allow us to go home, to tell us really what was going on and that we needed to prepare ourselves for the worst,” Conder told The Associated Press in a phone interview. “It was nothing like that. Not one supervisor told us what was really going on.”
Conder’s comments came on the same day that Beshear said Kentucky’s workplace safety agency would look into the eight deaths.
A spokesman for the company insisted that employees were free to leave anytime.
Conder, 29, said her supervisor threatened to write her up if she left early, and that accumulated write- ups can lead to firing.
More than 100 people were working on holiday candle orders when the twister leveled the facility. The scale of the damage initially stoked fears that scores of workers could be found dead in the rubble.
The company later said many employees who survived left the site and went to homes with no phone service. Since then, all workers have been accounted for, according to state and local officials who have spoken to the company.