Deadly tornadoes devastate communities in six states

District Judge Brian Crick (Kentucky Court of Justice)

District Judge Brian Crick was among those who lost their lives when a series of tornadoes pummeled the state this weekend, according to a statement from Kentucky Supreme Court Chief Justice John D. Minton Jr.

Crick served McLean and Muhlenberg counties, the court said.

The Graves County Courthouse in Mayfield was also heavily damaged in Friday night’s deadly tornado, according to the statement.

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear says he fears that more than 80 lives have been lost in the storms that pummeled his state and that he expects the death toll to rise over 100.

Beshear told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that he also expects other challenges ahead given power outages and winter weather conditions and said that certain morgues throughout the state may not be big enough to accommodate the current needs.

The governor added that hospitals around the state are also coordinating aid and sending help to hard-hit areas. 

Beshear asked people to stay at home and leave roads open for emergency workers and said he is thankful for communities in and outside the state for their support as they rally with Kentucky.

Cars make their way past tornado damage on December 11, in Mayfield, Kentucky.

More than 50,000 residents across the state of Kentucky remain without power following Friday night’s storm.  

As of 12:30 p.m. ET on Sunday, 53,553 people are without power according to PowerOutage.US. 

In an interview on Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said most of the outages were in the Western part of the state. 

The family of Clayton Cope, a 29-year-old US Navy veteran, confirmed to CNN that he died when a tornado hit an Amazon warehouse in Edwardsville, Illinois, on Friday evening. 

Carla Cope, Clayton’s mother, told CNN that her son was, “a really good kid.” He would have turned 30 on Dec. 27, she said. 

Clayton, like many of the men in the Cope family, spent six years serving in the US Navy, Carla said. He worked as a calibration specialist on aircraft carriers, she said. 

Clayton had worked for Amazon for just over a year as a maintenance mechanic, Carla said. His father also worked at the facility in the same position. 

“Had [Clay] not been there, my husband would have,” she said. 

Carla last spoke with Clay shortly before the tornado. She told him that the storm was coming and remembers him talking to someone else nearby telling him they needed to go make sure other employees knew, as well.  

The governor of Kentucky confirmed a 3-year-old and 5-year-old are among the victims of this weekend’s deadly storms.

Beshear said the 3-year-old lived in Graves County and the five-year-old in Muhlenberg County.

The state has opened its state parks as well as 11 shelters to impacted residents. The governor said only six shelters remain open as Kentuckians house family and strangers, in some cases. 

Beshear reiterated the storm caused “massive damage” and “devastation like none of us have ever seen before.” 

“When this tornado hit, it didn’t just rip off a roof. It obliterated houses, just totally gone,” he said.

Beshear said a fund has been set up for impacted residents in the western part of the state as rebuilding efforts commence.

Recovery operations continue on Sunday, December 12, after the partial collapse of an Amazon Fulfillment Center in Edwardsville, Illinois.

A tornado warning siren sounded 11 minutes prior to a powerful storm ripping through an Amazon warehouse in Edwardsville, Illinois, on Friday, according to a company representative. 

She said employees sheltered in two different unspecified safe areas.

Nantel said dispatchers also contacted Amazon delivery drivers in the area as well and told them to shelter-in-place.

Six people were killed at the facility as a result of the tornado, CNN previously reported.

The company is donating one million dollars to a local foundation for recovery efforts in the local community, Nantel said.

“It’s really important to us as a company that we take care of not just our employees but our employees who lost their loved ones in this tragic event – their families as well as the community as a whole,” Nantel said.

Nantel said the company is working with both employees and the families who lost loved ones, “because we want to understand what they need as well.”

This Saturday, December 11 satellite photo provided by Maxar shows a close-up view of Monette Manor Nursing Home and other homes after a tornado caused heavy damage in the area, in Monette, Arkansas.

Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson called the fact that only one person died after a tornado devastated a Monette nursing home, “a miracle.”

A tornado siren sounding 20 minutes before the storm hit allowed staff at the nursing homes to move residents into the hallways, he said.

“Preparation makes a big difference. The investments in those early warning systems saved a lot of lives in this instance,” the governor told Jake Tapper Sunday morning.

The death toll remains at two in the state after one person was killed in Monette at the nursing home and one in Leachville after a store was struck in deadly fashion, the governor previously said.

Hutchinson said he flew over portions of the state devastated by the weekend’s powerful storms and described “swaths of houses” that were leveled.

“As you fly over some of the communities that are impacted, there’s swaths of houses that are destroyed, people are displaced,” he said. 

Asked if the state of Arkansas is getting what it needs resource-wise from the federal government, Hutchinson said, “We are.”

Powerful storms like the ones that tore through parts of the central United States this weekend are the “new normal” in an era of climate change, the top federal emergency management official said on Sunday.

Deanne Criswell, the FEMA administrator, said her agency was prepared to bolster resilience in the face of more severe weather.

“The effects we are seeing of climate change are the crisis of our generation,” Criswell said. “We’re taking a lot of efforts at FEMA to work with communities to help reduce the impacts that we’re seeing from these severe weather events and help to develop systemwide projects that can help protect communities.”

She said the severity, duration and magnitude of the storms this late in the year were “unprecedented.”

A day earlier, President Biden said it was too early to know the specific effect climate change had on this week’s storms. He said he would ask his Environmental Protection Agency to assess.

Scientific research on the role that climate change is playing in the formation and intensity of tornadoes is not as robust as for other types of extreme weather like droughts, floods and even hurricanes. The short and small scale of tornadoes, along with an extremely spotty and unreliable historical record for them, makes relationships to long-term, human-caused climate change very difficult.

While establishing connections between climate change and tornadoes is difficult, the correlation between El Niño/La Niña and tornadoes is strong. La Niña seasons tend to have increased tornado activity in the US, and it is worth noting that the US is currently experiencing La Niña, which is expected to last into spring of next year.

Criswell was speaking ahead of a scheduled visit to Kentucky to assess damage from a string of powerful storms that swept across a wide swath of the Midwest and South. She will travel alongside the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.

Criswell said the operation on the ground remains a rescue mission.

“I think there is still hope, right? We sent one of our federal urban search and rescue teams down to Kentucky. They arrived yesterday. They’ll be able to assist the localities with their ongoing rescue efforts. I think there is still hope and we should continue to try to find as many people as we can,” she said.

She listed housing, both short-term and long-term shelter, as a priority for the agency.

On ABC’s This Week, Criswell said she didn’t know whether Biden would visit Kentucky, noting she would give him updates on what she sees on the ground.

An aerial view of homes and business destroyed in Mayfield, Kentucky.

The governor of Kentucky said Sunday he expects the death toll from the weekend’s devastating storms to exceed 100 in his state. 

When asked about how many Kentuckians are unaccounted for, Beshear did not provide a number but said in Dawson Springs alone, the list of the missing is eight pages long, single-spaced.

Beshear said rescue efforts are going well with federal and local partners pouring in to help comb through “the massive, widespread damage.”

The governor said he plans to visit the collapsed candle factory in Mayfield but said “it will be a miracle if we pull anybody out of that.” 

The governor said he has heard the facility did have an emergency plan in place.

“They did have a plan inside the facility and most of the workers got to what was supposed to be safest place. But when you see the damage that this storm did not just there, but across the area, I’m not sure there was a plan that would have worked,” he said.

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear addressed the historic nature of the storms that ripped through his state this weekend during an interview with CNN Sunday.

Beshear also shared information on the Team Western Kentucky Tornado Relief Fund, an online portal where people can donate funds to assist Kentuckians impacted by the devastation of the storms.

FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell said “there is still hope” that missing loved ones will be rescued following the tornadoes that devastated six states this weekend.

This Saturday, December 11 satellite photo provided by Maxar shows the county courthouse and other nearby buildings after a tornado caused heavy damage in the area, in Mayfield, Kentucky.

Mayfield Mayor Kathy Stewart O’Nan said freezing temperatures and a lack of water in the city have become “an immediate concern” as rescue and recovery efforts continue following the storms.

O’Nan also shared how the storm’s impact had become personal.

“I learned last night one of my former students worked there and lost their life. I also learned that a gentleman who we had a work program with some of the inmates from our local jail who were released to work there, but had to have a deputy with them at all times and that deputy lost his life. It is hitting home as far as [the] public — the loss of their souls to us as we learn more and more about who will not be with us anymore,” she said.

The director of Kentucky Emergency Management said Sunday that officials believe the catastrophic storm that devastated parts of the state over the weekend had a track of around 217 miles.

Dossett said the “massive recovery effort” is focused largely in Graves, Mayfield, Dawson Springs, and Bowling Green. Teams from FEMA are currently on the ground and the FEMA administrator, along with other federal officials, are expected to arrive later today, Dossett said. 

Dossett said the level of destruction across the state is cataclysmic.

“The devastation is quite frankly something that you would see in a war zone. This is an event where we had commercial and residential properties literally stripped clean from the earth,” he said. 

Recovery efforts continue as officials work to move resources such as water, power, and people into the hardest-hit areas as quickly as possible.

When asked about rescue and recovery efforts at the candle factory in Mayfield, Dossett said efforts there are “daylight to dusk” but provided no official update on the death toll. He described the scene as “very sad and solemn.”

 In this aerial view, homes are badly destroyed after a tornado ripped through area the previous evening on December 11, in Mayfield, Kentucky. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said damage is worse than previously thought in western Kentucky after deadly tornadoes ripped through the state.

He said at least 50 people are dead, but he estimated there will be more fatalities.

“This tornado on the ground for 200-plus miles, everything in its wake is gone — homes, businesses, government buildings, just gone. There are pieces of industrial facilities in trees. It’s hard to imagine that this is even possible,” he said.

Mayfield Mayor Kathy Stewart O’Nan told CNN that “it looks like a bomb has gone on off here.”

Beshear said resources are in the process of being sent to damaged areas.

“We’ve requested an emergency declaration from the White House. That is in process. We are told it’s going to happen and they are already sending resources our way. We’ve got first responders from all over the commonwealth, coming to where they’re needed the most. Mayfield is ground zero,” he said.