Crews Search For Missing After Twisters Batter U.S. States

Rescuers combed through the wreckage after a tornado outbreak roared across the middle of the US, leaving dozens dead and communities in despair, Bruce Schreiner and Dylan Lovan reported for the Associated Press (AP).

Photo Insert: Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear during a briefing concerning the tornado

A twister carved a track that could rival the longest on record as the stormfront smashed apart a candle factory, crushed a nursing home and flattened an Amazon distribution center.

“I pray that there will be another rescue. I pray that there will be another one or two,” Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said, as crews sifted through the wreckage of the candle factory in Mayfield, where 110 people were working overnight Friday when the storm hit. Forty of them were rescued.

Beshear told the Boston Globe that he fears tornadoes have killed 70 people in the state and the death toll may exceed 100.

“This has been the most devastating tornado event in our state’s history,” Beshear said at a news conference Saturday. Severe storms moved through the area Friday night and caused catastrophic damage across several states.

The death toll of 36 across five states includes six people in Illinois, where an Amazon facility was hit; four in Tennessee; two in Arkansas, where a nursing home was destroyed; and two in Missouri.

If early reports are confirmed, the twister “will likely go down perhaps as one of the longest track violent tornadoes in US history,” said Victor Gensini, a researcher on extreme weather at Northern Illinois University.

The longest tornado on record, in March 1925, tracked for about 220 miles (355 kilometers) through Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana. But Gensini said this twister may have touched down for nearly 250 miles (400 kilometers).

The storm was all the more remarkable because it came in December, when normally colder weather limits tornadoes, he said.

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