‘Histrorical’ tornadoes kill at least 83 in US

At least 83 dead, houses flattened as far as the eye can see and tangles of rubble. The provisional toll was devastating Saturday, December 11, after the central and southern United States swept through a series of tornadoes of unprecedented violence.

US President Joe Biden lamented “one of the worst series of tornadoes” in US history, calling their devastation “unimaginable tragedy”.

In all, at least 83 deaths have been reported across five states.

In Illinois, at least six people died in the collapse of an Amazon warehouse, announced the Edwardsville fire chief, specifying that the rescue part of the operations was now over leaving room for the recovery of the victims.

Employees of the retail giant were working nights to process orders before the holiday season.

Tennessee has recorded four deaths, two people have died in Arkansas, while at least one death is in Missouri.

But it is Kentucky, in the center-east of the country, which is paying the heaviest price after the passage of this devastating meteorological phenomenon, particularly affecting the immense American plains.

After announcing “at least 70 dead” in his state, Governor Andy Beshear said that “by the end of the day or tomorrow”, the death toll would rise to more than 100 deaths, specifying even to expect this that “the number is rising considerably”. He called on residents to donate blood to treat the injured.

“A pile of matches”

“The devastation is incomparable with anything I have seen in my life, and I am struggling to find the words to describe it,” he added.

The disaster represents “the worst, most devastating, and deadliest tornado in Kentucky history,” said the elected official.

Mayfield, a town of 10,000 people, was at the epicenter of the disaster.

The heart of the city looks “like a pile of matches,” Mayor Kathy O’Nan told CNN.

“The churches in the center have been destroyed, and the court in the heart of the city has been destroyed,” she added.

“It’s as if a bomb had exploded in our neighborhood,” Alex Goodman, a resident of Mayfield, told AFP after a trying night in the dark and in anguish.

Across the city, buildings were gutted, metal twisted, vehicles overturned, and trees and bricks strewn across the streets.

In a parking lot in the center, volunteers were hard at work collecting essential items for affected families, noted an AFP journalist on the spot.

They gathered in particular warm clothes, diapers for babies and bottles of drinking water, while the water and electricity distribution networks are no longer operational.

Waiting for a “miracle”

Employees of a candle factory were trapped there after the roof gave way under the strong winds. We still had no news of dozens of employees out of the hundred present.

No one had been able to come out alive from the rubble since the morning, again raising fears of a very heavy toll.

Governor Andy Beshear even spoke of a “miracle” if any survivors were now found.

Over a large swath of American territory, the night was terrible. “We had an alert at 9:30 am, we were told that the tornado was coming. It came and went away like that, suddenly” told AFP David Norseworthy, 69, in front of the destroyed porch of his house.

“We’ve never seen anything like it in the area. Where it hits, it destroys everything.”

Federal disaster response agencies have already started to be deployed there, said Joe Biden, who pledged that “the federal state will do whatever it can to help.”

American channels filmed the passage of the tornadoes: black columns sweeping the ground, illuminated by intermittent lightning. About 30 of these storms hit the United States on Friday evening and Saturday morning.

One of the tornadoes traveled more than 400 km, according to the National Weather Service (NWS), while on average these do not exceed more than 6 km in distance.

Police confirmed at least two deaths in the warehouse. After lamenting the expected tornado toll, Joe Biden stressed that the weather phenomena were “more intense” with global warming, but without establishing a causal link direct link between climate change and the disaster that grieved the country on Friday evening.

With AFP