For Biden one of the “largest” waves of tornadoes that have ever hit the United States
I am 84 confirmed victims of the tornado that have scourged six states of the USA. And the dozens of people still missing raise fears of a final toll of over a hundred deaths, he warned Andy Beshear, governor of the Kentucky, the state most affected. “It’s a tragedy,” the president said on television Joe Biden, visibly shaken, “we still don’t know how many lives have been lost, nor the real extent of the damage”.
For Biden it is probably about one of the “largest” tornado waves to ever hit the nation. During the night, rescuers continued to search for survivors in the rubble of buildings destroyed by the storm. In Kentucky alone, where a state of emergency was declared, over 70 people were killed, mostly due to the collapse of the roof of a candle factory in Mayfield, a town of 10,000 inhabitants that was razed to the soil from cyclones.
Local authorities have described one apocalyptic scenario: completely destroyed neighborhoods, collapsed historic buildings, fallen trees, overturned cars in the fields. At the factory, where an overtime night was underway to meet the demand for Christmas decorations, 110 workers were at work when the roof collapsed, Beshear explained. Forty people were pulled alive from the rubble but it would be “a miracle if someone else was found alive,” the governor warned.
There Cnn has published the dramatic request for help posted on Facebook by a factory employee trapped in the remains of the building. “We are trapped, please, all of you, send us help,” Kyanna Parsons-Perez pleads, then rescues, as a colleague is heard moaning in the background, “we are in the Mayfield Candle Factory … Please, you everyone, pray for us “. “This event is the worst, most devastating, deadliest series of tornadoes in the history of Kentucky”, Beshear told reporters, expressing the fear of “having lost over 100 people”.
“I have never seen such devastation in my life,” added the governor, “I have trouble putting it into words.” At least 13 victims have been registered in the other states affected by the approximately thirty tornadoes that have crossed the region. Six people lost their lives in an Amazon warehouse in Illinois where Christmas orders were being fulfilled. Two other victims were counted in Arkansas, where a retirement home was destroyed by the storm. Four deaths have been recorded in Tennessee and one in Missouri, while in Mississippi, another state hit by tornadoes, no victims have yet been reported.
There are half a million homes left without electricity throughout the United States. Biden promised the greatest possible assistance to the devastated areas, which he promised to visit. Although the impact of climate change on the extraordinary atmospheric phenomenon is not clear, “we all know that everything is more intense when the climate is warming, everything”, added the president of the United States. And the tornado that wiped out Mayfield is record breaking. The cyclone traveled 227 miles on land overall (365 kilometers), overcoming the cyclone that in 1925, in Missouri, killed 695 people after crossing 219 miles.
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