MAYFIELD, KENTUCKY (NYTIMES) - Mr Darryl Johnson did not know what his sister did at the Mayfield Consumer Products factory or why she worked nights; he knew only that her husband dropped her off Friday evening (Dec 10) and that they never heard from her again.
He stood in a gravel lot next to the giant ruin of metal and wood, which just days ago was the candle factory where his sister, Ms Janine Johnson-Williams, had clocked in for her shift.
The factory where he works, 45 miles (72km) up the road, shut down when the storms were approaching, Mr Johnson said. He could not find anyone in Mayfield to tell him anything.
"I'm prepared for the worst," he said. "I'm praying for the best."
This was the bleak calculation that settled in Sunday across the middle of the country, where an outbreak of tornadoes on Friday night, including one that travelled more than 220 catastrophic miles, left a deep scar of devastation.
As work crews dug through ruins and small-town coroners counted the dead, the scale of destruction was becoming clearer.
The death toll from the tornado swarm has been estimated to be at least 90 people, with deaths in Arkansas, Illinois, Missouri and Tennessee. The greatest loss of life was in Kentucky, where Governor Andy Beshear said in a news briefing on Sunday that at least four counties had tolls in the double digits.
A dozen people were killed in Warren County, several of them children; in Muhlenberg County, there were 11 victims, all in the tiny town of Bremen. One was four months old.
"We're still finding bodies," Mr Beshear said. "I mean, we've got cadaver dogs in towns that they shouldn't have to be in."
US President Joe Biden on Sunday declared a major federal disaster in Kentucky, paving the way for additional federal aid, an administration official said.
The president had previously declared the storms a federal emergency, enabling the Federal Emergency Management Agency to assist in the aftermath as thousands face housing, food, water and power shortages.
But under an emergency declaration assistance is limited to US$5 million (S$6.8 million), according to the FEMA website. A major disaster declaration has no such limit.
On Sunday, a spokesman for the candle factory told the Associated Press that eight people were confirmed dead and another eight remained missing, but dozens more had been accounted for. While officials initially indicated that 40 of 110 workers at Mayfield Consumer Products had been rescued, the spokesman said that more than 90 people had now been located.
Mr Beshear told reporters on Sunday that the state had not confirmed those figures.
In Edwardsville, Illinois, officials released the names of six people killed while working at an Amazon delivery depot that was hit by a tornado.
"At this time, there are no additional reports of people missing," the Edwardsville Police Department said in a statement on Sunday.
More than 50,000 customers were still without power in Kentucky on Sunday afternoon, and more than 150,000 were without power in Michigan, which was also affected by the sprawling storm.
Mr Beshear said there were "thousands of people without homes" in Kentucky, although the sheer amount of devastation made precise figures, at this point, impossible to come by.
"I don't think we'll have seen damage at this scale, ever," he said.
The aftermath of tornadoes in Mayfield, Kentucky, on Dec 12, 2021. PHOTO: NYTIMES
Perhaps most troubling was just how much was still unknown.
In Mayfield, crews were still picking through the wreckage of the candle factory where scores of people remained unaccounted for.
"There have been, I think, multiple bodies," Mr Beshear said. "The wreckage is extensive."
In the town of Dawson Springs, where Mr Beshear's father was born and where his grandfather owned a funeral home, the list of the missing was eight pages long, single-spaced, the governor said in an interview on CNN.
On Sunday, slabs lay bare on the ground where houses once stood along the streets of Dawson Springs. Mattresses hung in trees and were strewed about the housing lots. Teams hunting for victims and survivors left spray-painted symbols on walls that remained standing.
Families bearing bruises and scrapes from Friday night walked among the wreckage, looking through the rubble for medicine, insurance information and food stamps.
Ms Lacy Duke and her family were searching for two missing cats. In between calling out names, they described 22 seconds of deafening horror on Friday night as they huddled in a storm cellar, and an aftermath that was almost apocalyptic. Their house had folded like an accordion. A mobile home had disappeared. A teenage boy had injured his arm so badly it had to be amputated. The boy's grandmother had been stuck under a car.
"This year's been rough," Ms Duke said. She had been in a car accident, her son had been sick with Covid-19 and, at the auto parts supplier where she had worked, her whole department had been laid off. "And then this happened."
The storm system's devastation exposed all along its path a late-night world of warehouses and factories on the outskirts of towns and cities, where people worked handling the seasonal traffic of packages or making scented candles for US$8 to US$12 an hour.
A current of anger ran through the communities that were hit badly in the storm, as people demanded to know why so many were still on the job after alarms had sounded about the approaching danger.
At a Sunday morning church service in Granite City, Illinois, when the pastor asked for prayers for the loved ones of the six who died in the Amazon warehouse, Mr Paul Reagan, a retired steelworker, raised his hand. "There is no reason for us to lose family members," Mr Reagan said, "because corporate America wants a dollar."
In Kentucky, frustration was growing about what transpired at the candle factory, which accounted for a majority of the estimated deaths statewide. Although officials said that many if not most workers were sheltering in a safe place in the building when the tornado hit, some people asked why the factory stayed open well after warnings were raised about the severity of the storms.
An aerial photo shows the destruction of the Mayfield Consumer Products candle factory after tornadoes moved through the area, in the US state of Kentucky, on Dec 12, 2021. PHOTO: EPA-EFE
The Mayfield Consumer Products factory was one of the largest employers in the county, although employment waxed and waned with layoffs in some years and labour shortages in others.
"One of our biggest problems is labor," one of the company's owners told then-Gov. Matt Bevin when he visited Mayfield in 2019. The factory was recently advertising 10- and 12-hour shifts, starting at US$8 an hour, with mandatory overtime "required frequently".
Several inmates from the Graves County jail were working there on Friday night as part of an inmate-to-work program. All survived the storm, according to the jail; a deputy from the jail did not.
In a statement on Mayfield Consumer Products' website, CEO Troy Propes said: "We're heartbroken about this, and our immediate efforts are to assist those affected by this terrible disaster. Our company is family-owned and our employees, some who have worked with us for many years, are cherished."
The company set up a victims' fund and said all donations would go to relief for tornado victims.
Company officials could not immediately be reached for further comment.
In the days since the tornado, workers who survived began to ask why they had been inside the building when everyone knew what was coming.
Mr Isaiah Holt, 32, was on his shift in the wax and fragrance department when he heard sirens. On Sunday, he was in a hospital bed in Nashville, Tennessee, aching from a bruised lung and broken ribs and worrying about his brother, who also worked at the factory and who was showered with bricks when the building collapsed.
Mr Holt had liked his job, he said. But he questioned whether the company should have kept people working after tornado warnings were issued. "They should have just cancelled," he said.
The aftermath of tornadoes in Mayfield, Kentucky, on Dec 12, 2021. PHOTO: NYTIMES
In Mayfield, Mr Angel Romero, 38, watched his wife cook chicken soup and heat up tortillas on a stove she had made out of throwaway bricks. Romero, a father of two children, ages 8 and 5, looked around his devastated block, now barely recognisable.
"When it came, it devoured everything in its path," he said. He looked toward his children. "They are still trying to process what happened."
The Latino population in Mayfield has grown quickly over the past decade, with immigrants from Mexico and Guatemala and newcomers from Puerto Rico arriving to work in chicken factories and at "las velas" ("the candles"), the nickname for the factory where many most likely died.
"The Latino community was hit hard by this tragedy," said Ms Ana Masso, wife of the pastor of the Primera Iglesia Bautista Hispana, where she was collecting donated items to help the people in the community who had been left homeless, lost loved ones or both.
"Many don't know where to go or who to ask for help," she said. "I really don't know where do we go from here."
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