VIDEO – United States: images of cities devastated by deadly tornadoes – LCI

From an aerial perspective, the town of Mayfield, Ky. Now looks like a pile of matches. Its city center, its shops, its courthouse, its candle factory … Everything has been destroyed and is nothing more than a tangle of beams and twisted sheets, stacked several meters high.

Still at work on Sunday, excavators were trying to make their way among the tons of materials lying down by the winds, as shown by the TF1 20H report at the top of this article. In the debris, overflown in a helicopter, a car even seemed to have been deposited in the middle of the ransacked site.

When the storm hit Friday night, 110 people were still working at the Mayfiled Consumer Products candle factory, to meet the strong demand for the holiday season. Dozens of them were stranded under the rubble. “I really didn’t know if I was going to make it or not. Around me, I heard my colleagues shouting: ‘this person is dead, this person is not responding …’ It was panic everywhere “, says Jemayron Hart, survivor, from his hospital bed.

Like him, 40 people were released by the emergency services. The others are still missing. According to Andy Beshear, governor of the state, finding them alive would be like a miracle. “This is the most devastating series of tornadoes we have seen”, he recalled. In this state, the death toll is at least 70. This is probably the heaviest count of the five states affected between Friday evening and Saturday morning by around 30 tornadoes.

In Illinois, an Amazon fulfillment center was also hit. He too was in full swing as Christmas approached. Before the storm, the site consisted of three large warehouses, recognizable on a satellite photo by their rectangular shape and white color. After the disaster, images seen from the sky clearly show the passage of the tornado. The entire right side of one of the warehouses was completely destroyed.

Inside, there were around 100 of them and were warned of the arrival of the tornado just 11 minutes before impact. The instruction was given to seal in the underground shelters provided for this purpose. It was not enough to save everyone. 45 people were evacuated. Dozens are still missing and there are at least six victims.

“We are continuing to look for signs of life at the site and we will continue the search operations until all personnel are located. It is estimated that these operations will last three days.”said James Whiteford, the fire chief for Edwardsville, where the site was located.

In Arkansas, in Monette, a nursing home was completely ransacked. In the corridors, carts are entangled with building materials and wires falling jumbled from the ceiling. Wheelchairs are found everywhere outside.

67 people resided in the area. Staff only had 20 minutes to bring them to safety before the tornado arrived. “It was very difficult, they are old people, 90% cannot get around on their own”, says an employee. Prepared for this kind of event, however, the person was able to act in time. There was only one casualty. For the governor of the state, it is a miracle.