Photo: Brett Carlsen / Getty Images
For: EFE
Sunday, July 7
Kentucky candle factory spokesperson says 8 killed in tornadoes
The company that owns the candle factory that collapsed on Friday due to a tornado in Mayfield (Kentucky) said this Sunday that the confirmed death toll is eight workers and that many others would be missing, figures much lower than those handled by the authorities.
In statements to local media, Bob Ferguson, spokesman for the Mayfield Consumer Products company, indicated that 93 of the hundred people who were working in the factory at the time of the collapse are located and safe, while the governor of the state, Andy Beshear, had indicated that only 40 had survived.
The television channel WPSD Local 6 reported that Ferguson says that, of the close to 110 people who worked the night shift in the factory, 93 are alive and 8 are dead.
However, during a press conference this Sunday afternoon in Mayfield, the governor reiterated his previous statements in which he claimed that only 40 were localized, so there are close to 80 missing.
Beshear indicated, without specifying, that they had not been able to confirm information from the company on the figures.
“Still we are receiving information about the candle factory. The owner has been in contact and thinks he has different information. We are trying to verify it, ”said Beshear. “I pray that perhaps the original estimates of those we have lost are wrong.”
Hours before the press conference, the governor told CNN that the total death toll in his state from the different tornadoes that made landfall on Friday is already around 80 and that he expects it to exceed one hundred.
“I know we have lost more than 80 Kentucky residents. That number will exceed 100. This is the deadliest tornado we have ever had, “he said in an interview with the television network.
Beshear assured that since Saturday they had not found no survivors and that the only thing they have recovered in the last hours are “multiple bodies.”
This tornado is one of four that made landfall in Kentucky on Friday night and Beshear said he fears a double-digit death toll in at least four counties in his region.
Mayfield was the city hardest hit by the surge of more than 30 tornadoes that hit six states across the country, where they left a balance of six dead in Illinois, four in Tennessee, two in Arkansas and two in Missouri, according to local authorities.
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