Twister: Mayfield mourning the dead

Mayfield (US): Judy Burton’s hands shivered as she gazed up at what had been her third-floor apartment. She could see her clothes still hanging in the closet, through the building’s shredded walls. Across the street, her church was boarded up. A few blocks away, the spire was ripped away from the town’s grand courthouse, its roof caved in. The restaurant where neighbors met for lunch, too, was lost in the rubble. Burton and her dog had narrowly escaped as a tornado hit her town, part of an outbreak of twisters across the Midwest and South. Now, she stood among the grind of heavy machinery clearing the wreckage of landmarks, businesses and homes of Mayfield, population 10,000.

Burton can’t imagine a single family here not mourning. Theirs is the sort of town where everyone is connected to everyone else. Mayfield was one of the worst-hit towns in the unusual mid-December spate of tornadoes, and Burton looked around at a disorienting jumble of bricks and broken glass. At least eight people working at a Mayfield candle factory were killed, and eight more are missing. It’s still unclear how many others in Mayfield died. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear had feared more than 100 dead statewide, but on Sunday afternoon he scaled back that estimate to as low as 50, with many at the candle factory accounted for. —(AP)