Most Employees at Kentucky Factory Hit by Tornado Have Been Accounted For, Company Says
- Josh Zehner
- Dec 13, 2021
- 3 min read
Emergency officials in Kentucky were preparing on Monday to locate and identify the remaining victims from Friday’s devastating tornadoes after a glimmer of hope emerged suggesting that the number of missing employees at a destroyed candle factory in the town of Mayfield was much lower than initially thought.
Troy Propes, the chief executive of Mayfield Consumer Products, said in an interview late Sunday that eight employees were dead and six were still missing — far fewer than the 70 initially thought to be unaccounted for after the Friday night storm.
State officials have not yet confirmed the more optimistic numbers; Gov. Andy Beshear had said earlier that only 40 of the 110 people thought to be in the factory at the time of the disaster had been rescued.
Bob Ferguson, a spokesman for the candle company, said on Sunday that in the early hours after the storm, it had seemed like “dozens and dozens of people were in the rubble.” He added: “Thank God that’s not proving to be true.”
At least six people were killed when another tornado struck an Amazon warehouse in Edwardsville, Ill. Officials there said on Sunday that there were no more reports of people missing inside the facility, but search efforts for additional victims continued.
Even with early indications that Mayfield’s death toll may be smaller than initially feared, Mr. Beshear braced the public on Sunday afternoon for more victims to be announced in the days ahead. At least four counties in Kentucky have deaths “in double digits,” Mr. Beshear said. “The best that I think we can hope for would be the 50, but I think it’s going to be significantly worse than that.”
In Warren County, where about 12 people were killed, including several children, the process of identifying victims has been slowed because the people who could make those identifications are themselves recovering from injuries sustained in the storm, according to the county coroner, Kevin Kirby.
“There’s a lot of people injured and in hospitals,” Mr. Kirby said in an interview on Sunday afternoon.
Some of the rescue workers, Mr. Beshear said, were themselves victims of the devastation. At one fire station, he said, he met with “first responders who themselves are survivors of the disaster.” Those responders had put “their own needs behind and continue to respond to the needs of others.”
The Kentucky governor praised federal officials for what he said has been a quick and thorough response. A federal state of emergency has been declared, the governor said, adding that it was “rare” for it to have been put into place so “incredibly quickly.”
The heads of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Federal Emergency Management Agency joined Mr. Beshear on Sunday. “I want to thank all of them,” he said at the news conference. “And starts with the president, who called me three times yesterday alone.”
The largest of the tornadoes that ripped through six states will, according to Mr. Beshear “ultimately be the longest tornado in certainly U.S. history, from the point where it touched down to when it finally picked back up.”
Of the tornado’s more than 220 miles of destruction, he said, “200 of them are in my state, with our people who have suffered from it.”
At least three tornadoes were believed to have hit Kentucky on Friday night, the governor said, before adding that, “I think we now believe many, many more.”
The tornadoes tore through parts of Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee, said Bill Bunting, the operations chief at the Storm Prediction Center, part of the National Weather Service.
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