MAYFIELD, Ky. — Night-shift workers were in the middle of the holiday rush, cranking out candles at Mayfield Consumer Products, when a tornado closed in on the factory and the word went out to seek shelter, according to AP.
For Autumn Kirks, that meant tossing aside wax and fragrance buckets to make an improvised safe place. She glanced away from her boyfriend, Lannis Ward, and when she looked back, he was gone. Later in the day, she got the terrible news — that Ward had been killed in the storm.
At least eight people at the factory were killed, among dozens of fatalities across several Kentucky counties. The state was the worst-hit by far in an unusual mid-December swarm of twisters across the Midwest and the South that leveled entire communities and left at least 14 people dead in Illinois, Tennessee, Arkansas and Missouri.
But the factory toll, at least, will be lower than initially feared.
Gov. Andy Beshear said Saturday that only 40 of the 110 people working in the factory at the time were rescued, and that “it’ll be a miracle if anybody else is found alive in it.” But on Sunday, the candle company said that while eight were confirmed dead and eight remained missing, more than 90 others had been located.
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