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While relief was still at work Saturday morning, President Joe Biden spoke of an “unimaginable tragedy” and assured that the federal administration was working in concert with the governors of the affected states.
It is in Kentucky, in the center-east of the country, that the heaviest toll is to be deplored after the passage of this devastating meteorological phenomenon, which particularly affects the plains of the United States.
“I fear that there are more than 50 dead in Kentucky (…), we are probably closer to 70 to 100 dead, it’s awful,” said governor of that state Andy Beshear on Saturday. ‘a press conference.
Mayfield in particular, a town of 10,000 people, appears to have been at the epicenter of the disaster. Entire city blocks have been razed to the ground, reminiscent of a war zone, according to first images sent at sunrise on Saturday.
“The city has suffered the hardest blows. The devastation is massive,” said Michael Dossett, a local relief official, interviewed on CNN.
He mentioned a “ground zero”, an expression used to describe the ruins of the World Trade Center after the attacks of September 11, 2001 in New York.
“Countless victims”
The collapse of the roof of a candle-making factory in Mayfield in particular “claimed countless lives”, Governor Beshear said.
“Before midnight, I declared a state of emergency,” he said, adding that search and rescue teams had been deployed in this chaos made worse by the power cuts.
Photos and videos shared on social media show gutted buildings, twisted metal, overturned vehicles, trees and bricks strewn across the streets.
Several counties in Kentucky were also devastated by the strongest tornado that traveled more than 300 kilometers in the state, the governor added.
“At first we could just hear the rain. And then suddenly there was a really loud noise, like a train,” Lori Wooton, a resident of Dawson Springs, Ky. .
“It didn’t seem like long … three or four seconds and it was gone. But then we went out to see and the damage was unimaginable,” she continued. “There are so many things scattered around, it’s hard to know what belongs to whom. And the power lines are down, so you have to be very careful.”
American channels filmed the passage of the tornadoes: black columns sweeping the ground, illuminated by intermittent lightning.
“The damage is indescribable. The Mayfield landscape as we know it is in turmoil,” said Dean Patterson of the Kentucky Police Department. “We have never seen until today what we are witnessing,” added the official.
Further northwest, in Illinois, strong winds partially tore off the roof of a storm-ravaged Amazon warehouse. These are employees of the distribution giant who worked nights to process orders before the holiday season.
“Prayers”
Police have confirmed several deaths in the warehouse and the Collinsville Emergency Management Agency cited “many people trapped” in the building.
The emergency services worked until the early hours of Saturday to try to free these people from the installation, a third of which is nothing more than rubble.
Images from the Edwardsville Amazon warehouse, shared by US news channels and social media, show much of the installation’s roof torn off, one of the walls collapsed in the building and rubble strewn across the site .
Illinois Governor JB Pritzker said he addressed his “prayers to the people of Edwardsville.”
In a statement to local media, Amazon spokesman Richard Rocha said the “safety and well-being” of Amazon employees and partners was the group’s “top priority”.
“We are assessing the situation and will share additional information as it becomes available,” he added.
In Arkansas, one person was killed and 20 were trapped in a nursing home, media reported. But rescuers managed to evacuate the trapped from the building whose structure was “virtually destroyed,” Craighead County official Marvin Day told local news channels. Another person died elsewhere in that state.
In Tennessee, at least two people have been killed in weather-related events, according to an emergency management official quoted by local media.
Tornadoes also hit Missouri.
Climate change is increasing the magnitude and frequency of storms that are already affecting the United States, scientists say.
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