At least 100 feared killed after a string of powerful tornadoes obliterated buildings, homes and anything else in their wayDamaged apartment buildings and debris is seen after a devastating outbreak of tornadoes in Bowling Green, Kentucky, US, on December 12, 2021. Picture: REUTERS/AMIRA KARAOUD
At least 100 people were believed to have been killed in Kentucky alone after the tornadoes tore a320-km path through the US Midwest and South on Friday night. Six workers were killed at an Amazon warehouse in Illinois. A nursing home was struck in Missouri. More than 70,000 people were left without power in Tennessee.
Janet Kimp, 66, and her son Michael Kimp, 25, survived by hunkering down in their hallway — the only part of the house where the roof or the walls did not come crashing down, she said on Saturday. Down the road, war veteran Robert Bowlin, 59, and his son Christopher Bowlin, 24, were hard-boiling eggs on a campfire outside their home. They used wood from a tree that had collapsed, narrowly avoiding their house.Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear said the collection of tornadoes was the most destructive in the state’s history. He said about 40 workers had been rescued at the Mayfield candle factory, which had about 110 people inside when it was reduced to a pile of rubble.
The genesis of the tornado outbreak was a series of overnight thunderstorms, including a super cell storm that formed in northeast Arkansas. That storm moved from Arkansas and Missouri and into Tennessee and Kentucky.