Tornadoes Tear Through South and Midwest, With at Least 70 Dead in Kentucky
The New York Times
Power was out across the region on Saturday, and severe storms were expected to continue.
MAYFIELD, Ky. — Rescue workers across the middle of the country combed through wreckage for survivors on Saturday after a horde of tornadoes ripped a catastrophic swath from Arkansas through Kentucky. Scores of people were killed in the storms, and officials warned that the toll was almost certain to rise as they sifted through the ruins.
The tornadoes tore through at least six states on Friday night, including Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee, said Bill Bunting, the operations chief at the Storm Prediction Center, part of the National Weather Service. They crumbled metal like paper, swatted down concrete buildings and threw a freight train off its track.
The tornado outbreak killed people who were working the Friday night shifts at a candle factory in Kentucky, where scores are believed to have died, and at an Amazon warehouse in Illinois, where at least six people were killed and where recovery operations were continuing. Officials said on Saturday that they did not know how many workers at the warehouse were unaccounted for but that they expected recovery efforts to continue for three more days.