‘We were trapped’ after tornado struck
Candle factory survivors recount narrow escape
MAYFIELD, Ky. – Valeria Yanis, a mother of two, was working a late shift at the candle factory in Mayfield, Kentucky, as the tornado barreled straight at them.
Employees rushed to one of the bathrooms for cover, she said. The lights went out. The noise intensified. She hid under a water fountain.
“We couldn’t see anything. Everyone was panicking,” she said. “Everything fell on us. Roof, metal and rocks. We were all trapped.”
She saw some suffer grisly injuries from debris. She saw two people die. “There were so many screams.” She found a tunnel with two others and crawled outside. She hurt her head, shoulder and leg and was treated and released from a hospital, she said.
Saturday, she spoke wrapped in a blanket on her sofa in a house in shattered Mayfield. The family had no electricity, water or natural gas.
Even in her injured state, mostly she worried about her co-workers as she tried to wrap her mind around the scope of the disaster.
“It feels like it was a dream,” she said. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said he believes “at least dozens” of workers at the candle factory were killed in a roof collapse when a tornado struck Friday evening.
Of the 110 people inside, roughly 40 had survived, been found or rescued. Hopes dwindled that more would be found alive in the factory, which was largely flattened.
“We’re gonna lose a lot of lives at that facility,” Beshear said at a news conference in Mayfield.
He said it was the site of the tornado’s largest loss of life and perhaps the largest cluster of tornado deaths in Kentucky history.
Troy Propes, CEO of the Mayfield Consumer Products candle factory, said in a statement Saturday that the facility
was “destroyed ... by a tornado, and tragically employees were killed and injured. We’re heartbroken about this, and our immediate efforts are to assist those affected by this terrible disaster. Our company is family-owned and our employees, some who have worked with us for many years, are cherished. We’re immediately establishing an emergency fund to assist our employees and their families.
“We’re grateful to the first responders who heroically assisted our employees following the storm. And, we’re thankful for those who are generously offering to assist us. Your prayers are needed and appreciated,” according to the statement.
One hundred percent of donations made to the MCP Candles Tornado Victims’ Fund will be devoted to relief, according to the MCP website. Donations can be made at paypal.com/ paypalme/mcptornadovictimfund. Yanis said she liked working at the factory, a large employer in the town of roughly 10,000. Residents said it offered jobs to those with prior convictions or in recovery. ”They gave people second chances,” Summer Walker said.
Worker Kyana Parsons-perez told the “Today” show that inmates from the Graves County Jail were working at the factory when the building collapsed.
“And when I tell you some of those prisoners were working their tails off to get us out . ... They could’ve used that moment to try to run away or anything. They did not. They were there, (and) they were helping us,” she said.
In the neighborhoods near the factory, where trees cleaved roofs and bits of roofing were woven into treetops, many said they knew people who had worked there.
“It feels like all the town used to work there. My father used to work there, my grandfather used to work there,” said resident Teara O’reilly, who weathered the tornado with her fiance and young child in a home that lost all its windows.
Yanis, who is from Guatemala and has lived in the area for 12 years, said she worked the second shift. Before the tornado, she did not hear anyone asking to go home.
Another surviving employee, Chelsea Logue, said she’d restarted working there two weeks ago. Friday night, she said, managers lined up people in a restroom and a shelter.
She said they were in the area about 15 minutes before the tornado hit. There was a “really big boom,” she said.
“The building lifted up, and it swayed” before it crashed down, she said. “All you could hear was the screams of people.” Her head was protected by 5-gallon buckets of chemicals, she said.
“It was just – it was awful,” she said. “The woman that was on top of me, she managed to get herself loose and out from in between the walls. And I just jerked my head out from in between the bucket and the wall and got out.”
How she crawled out exactly, she doesn’t know: “By the grace of God, I got out of there.”
Many hoped, prayed and waited. “We still haven’t heard,” resident Mickey Kelly said of a friend who worked at the factory whose fate remained unknown.
Mayfield Fire Chief Jeremy Creason, who is also EMS director, said the main fire station was destroyed, but 11 counties sent ambulances to assist with the rescue-and-recovery effort at the factory and throughout the county.
First responders were dealing with structure fires, gas leaks and calls for rescue.
Creason said they found 30-40 “walking wounded” when they arrived at the factory. They’d “done a lot of rescues,” working carefully and methodically, he said, but they couldn’t get to some bodies.
“We had to, at times, crawl over casualties to get to live victims to get them out and mark those casualties as we work our way through the rubble,” he said. “That’s just a picture of what they’re dealing with down there.”
“We’re thankful for those who are generously offering to assist us. Your prayers are needed and appreciated.”
Troy Propes CEO of the Mayfield Consumer Products candle factory