Nashville, United States | AFP | Multiple tornadoes wreaked havoc in the United States late Friday and early Saturday, killing at least 50 in a devastated Kentucky town and about 100 trapped in an Amazon warehouse in Illinois.
Photos and videos shared on social media from the city of Mayfield, Kentucky, show buildings destroyed by the storm, with bent metal structures, trees and pieces of walls strewn across the streets.
Images of the tornadoes on US television channels, meanwhile, showed a black cylinder making its way across the ground, illuminated intermittently by lightning bolts.
Several Kentucky counties were devastated by at least four tornadoes that made landfall.
“I’m afraid there are more than 50 dead … probably between 70 and 100 (dead) is devastating,” Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said at a news conference.
The governor added that this was “the most serious tornado event in Kentucky history.”
The collapse of the roof of a candle factory left a large number of victims in the town of Mayfield, said the person in charge.
“Mayfield, in Graves County, will be ground zero,” Kentucky emergency management director Michael Dossett told CNN.
“The city took … the hardest blow. There is massive devastation in that city,” he said.
The governor declared a state of emergency before midnight on Friday and said rescue teams were deployed to save lives in this area, also affected by power outages.
Amazon Deposit
The storms left casualties and damage in several states in the southeastern and south-central United States overnight Friday.
Another storm affected an Amazon distribution center in the state of Illinois, according to local authorities. The media reported that a hundred workers were trapped at the scene.
On Saturday morning, emergency teams were working to rescue the employees of this warehouse of the distribution giant, a third of which was reduced to rubble.
Employees worked the night shift processing thousands of orders before the Christmas holidays.
The Collinsville emergency management agency described the incident as a “multi-casualty incident,” with “several people trapped in the Amazon warehouse.”
A tornado warning was active for the location at the time of the incident.
Images that were being shared on social media and on US television channels showed how a large part of the roof of the Amazon warehouse in Edwardsville had detached, while one of its walls had collapsed.
Debris was visible all over the place and Edwardsville police said in a statement that there were “confirmed victims.”
Illinois Governor JB Pritzer said Friday: “My prayers go out to the people of Edwardsville tonight.”
The police and the state emergency agency “are coordinating closely with local authorities and I will continue to monitor the situation,” he added.
In a statement, Amazon spokesman Richard Rocha said that “the safety and well-being of our employees and partners is our top priority right now. We are addressing the situation and will share additional information when we have it.”
Meanwhile, in Arkansas another person died and about 20 were trapped after a tornado hit a nursing home, local media reported.
A Craighead County official, Marvin Day, told local television networks that rescuers had successfully removed the people trapped there, but that the structure was “quite destroyed.”
And in Tennessee, at least two people died in accidents related to the storms, according to an emergency management official quoted by local media.
Scientists have warned that climate change is making storms more powerful and increasing in frequency, creating a growing threat to areas where extreme weather events are already common.
