By Gabriella Borter
MAYFIELD, Kentucky (Reuters) – Residents of the US state of Kentucky, many without electricity, gas or even a roof, woke up Sunday to a landscape desolate by a series of powerful tornadoes that could have left at least 100 dead. , in addition to destroying homes, businesses and everything they encountered along the way.
Authorities said they had little hope of finding survivors under the wreckage, but rescuers continued to dig through the rubble and residents salvaged whatever belongings they could find.
At least 100 people may have died in Kentucky alone, after tornadoes tore through the Midwest and Southern US on Friday night.
Six employees died at an Amazon.com warehouse in Illinois. A nursing home was hit in Missouri. More than 70,000 people were left without electricity in Tennessee.
Timothy McDill, 48, a refrigerator maintenance technician, slept on Saturday without power at his home in Mayfield, which his parents bought in 1992. A telephone pole went through the window and the brick wall was ripped away, leaving the exposed interior.
On the night of the storm, he tied himself, his wife, two 14- and 12-year-old grandchildren, his two Chihuahuas, and a cat to a sewer pipe in the basement using a mast rope and waited for the storm to pass.
“They acted like soldiers, they didn’t cry a lot,” McDill said of the kids. “My wife and I cry. We were afraid of losing the kids and they didn’t think about it.”
Steve Wright, 61, was driving for gas on Sunday morning and was nervous because it was running out. He has lived in Mayfield for four years and his condo has been spared.
After the storm had passed, he grabbed a flashlight and started walking around the city looking for people who might be buried. He ended up helping a father pull his 3-year-old son’s body out of the wreckage.
“It was bad. I helped take out the dead baby right there,” he said, gesturing toward the wreckage of what was a two-story house. “I prayed for both of them, that’s all I could do.”
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