Kentucky Gov. Weeps After Tornado Kill 74 With Over 100 Missing

LAGOS DECEMBER 14TH (NEWSRANGERS)-At least 74 people are dead and more than 100 still missing in Kentucky alone after tornadoes ravaged the area, shaken Gov. Andy Beshear said Monday.

The governor fought back tears at a morning press conference as he talked about the youngest victims — at least seven under the age of 18, including several babies just months old.

National Guard troops and FEMA crews are helping to search through the rubble for possible survivors — and more expected casualties, Beshear acknowledged at an afternoon briefing.

“We expect that this death count will continue to grow,” the grim-faced governor said. 

He said federal urban search teams have joined the recovery effort. 

“These are cadaver dogs that we never thought we needed,” Beshear said.

“When what I think will be [a category] F4 or an F5 tornado touches down and stays on the ground for 200 straight miles in a state with 120 counties, you have this many counties that have damage and this many counties that need help,” he said.

Beshear called it a “Christmas miracle” that only eight people have been confirmed dead at the Mayfield Consumer Products Candle Factory, which was fully staffed when it was leveled by the tornadoes.

He had put the state’s death toll at 64 earlier in the day — then increased it by 10 in the afternoon.

At the later briefing, Beshear questioned the official number of 109 people still unaccounted for, saying it was “way more.

“As I look at this broken down by county, way more,” he said. “Way more people unaccounted for than this. Eighty-one of these [missing] are in Hopkins County alone.”

His wife, Britainy Beshear, took the podium at one point to give information on donation and volunteer efforts — only to be too overcome with emotion to continue. As she wiped away tears, her gubernatorial husband took over and stood next to her as he read from her prepared remarks, before she was finally able to compose herself and continue. 

Additional dead victims may include 2-month-old Oaklynn Koon, whose parents revealed on Facebook that she died in a hospital Monday morning, 48 hours after her family home in western Kentucky was ripped apart. It wasn’t immediately clear if the official toll included Oaklynn’s death. Beshear said a 5-month-old died in the weather disaster. At least one other infant was listed among the dead, also.

“Like the folks in western Kentucky, I’m not doing so well today, and I’m not sure how many of us are,” the governor said at the morning press conference.

Speaking on the floor of the Senate on Monday, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) called the tragedy “the worst storm to hit Kentucky in my lifetime.

“Kentucky has been devastated, but we have not been defeated,” said McConnell, who has represented the state for 36 years. “Kentuckians are resilient people who will stay strong and united during the crisis.”

There were at least another 14 deaths in Illinois, Tennessee, Arkansas and Missouri as a result of the twisters that tore through the Midwest on Friday night.

Newly emerged video Monday showed the complete devastation, with towns reduced to rubble and “matchsticks” where rows of houses stood before Friday.

Rescuers resumed their search for survivors early Monday, especially in Kentucky, where President Biden declared a federal emergency and hundreds of National Guard troops were mobilized.

“People of western Kentucky have gone through an unspeakable trauma. You go from grief to shock… in the span of 10 minutes, and then you go back,” Beshear said. “It’s hard to understand how something like this can happen.”

The governor added it is hard to think of the survivors as “lucky,” given some of them have lost everything.

He told ABC’s “Good Morning America” early Monday that he had lost two of his own relatives as the tornado wiped out his father’s hometown of Dawson Springs.

“We need prayers. We are still hoping for miracles,” the governor said as the dig continued.

Meanwhile, dozens feared dead in the candle factory — the ground zero of the storms — were found alive, sparking hopes that the death toll wouldn’t be as dire as initially thought.

“We’re just getting cell service back up in some places, so we are finding people,” Beshear told “GMA,” calling it “incredible.”

He insisted that his state needed a long-term “commitment” for help, saying, “This is going to take years to rebuild.”

Mayfield Mayor Kathy Stewart O’Nan confirmed to NBC’s “Today” show that the death toll at the factory isn’t “as grim as we first thought.

“The problem there at first was getting an accurate number as to how many people were [still] actually at work that night” when the factory was hit, she said.

“Hopefully, today we get firm numbers,” she said of her town of about 10,000, near structures she described was having been reduced to “matchsticks” by a twister.

“There’s no power, no natural gas … there’s no flowing water,” she told the show, stressing that “resources are going to take a long time to be restored here.”

Across the state, tens of thousands of people were still without power. 

“This is a tough morning … but it’s OK, we’re still going to be all right,” O’Nan told “CBS Mornings.”

Wanda Johnson, 90, was one of those evacuated from a home flattened by a twister. 

“They tell me we don’t have a town,” Johnson told The Associated Press. “Everything’s gone. It’s just wiped away. It just flipped over our city.”

The tornado that leveled much of her town appears to be the same one that ripped up more than 230 miles across four states in four hours, also barreling through Arkansas, Missouri and Tennessee, the Evansville Courier & Press noted.

If confirmed, the so-called “Quad-State Tornado” would break the record for the longest twister ever, set by a 219-mile monster in 1925, the paper said.

That funnel was so powerful, it sent debris flying 30,000 feet into the air, according to Agence France-Presse.

Six people died in an Amazon warehouse in the southern Illinois city of Edwardsville, where they were on the night shift processing orders ahead of Christmas.

Meanwhile, four people were killed in Tennessee, and two died in Missouri. At least two also died in Arkansas, where a nursing home was destroyed and the governor said workers shielded residents with their own bodies.

Pope Francis expressed his sadness over the “devastating impact” of the tornadoes. 

Even Russian President Vladimir Putin sent a message saying his country “shares in the grief” of those who lost loved ones, AFP noted.

An emotional Gov. Beshear added Monday, “I was working to getting the confirmed deaths this morning and realized I was writing on the back of notes that one of my kids took from school.

“It is notes on inertia. It means that an object that’s in motion will stay in motion. So we’re going to keep putting one foot in front of the other, push through this. Everybody out there get the help you need. Take care of yourself.”

New York Post

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