Deadly Tornado OutbreakTornado News: Death Toll Rises as States Assess Damage

Follow our live coverage of the deadly tornado outbreak.

‘I don’t think we’ll have seen damage at this scale, ever,’ Kentucky governor says.

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An American flag is placed in a tree trunk after a series of tornadoes ripped through 200 miles in Kentucky.Credit...Johnny Milano for The New York Times

The number of people reported missing at a candle factory in Mayfield, Ky., after a devastating tornado was lowered Sunday evening after company officials said that most of the employees had now been accounted for.

Troy Propes, the chief executive officer of Mayfield Consumer Products, said in an interview that eight employees were dead and six were still missing — far fewer than the 70 initially thought to be unaccounted for after the Friday night storm.

In the early hours after the storm, it had seemed like “dozens and dozens of people were in the rubble,” said Bob Ferguson, a spokesman for the candle company. “Thank God that’s not proving to be true.”

Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky had said earlier Sunday that 110 employees were thought to be in the factory at the time of the disaster, and only 40 people had been rescued.

He said state officials had not confirmed any new numbers provided by the company.

“I am praying that maybe original estimates of those we lost were wrong,” Mr. Beshear said. There has not been a “live rescue” at the factory since 3:30 p.m. on Saturday, he said.

Mr. Ferguson said that the manufacturing facility sustained damage from a tornado of unusual strength.

“It looks like this is the strongest tornado to ever hit Kentucky,” he said in an interview. “Early reports are that this tornado stayed on the ground longer than any tornado in history. How could one anticipate something like that? This is a true, true act of God.”

At least six people were killed an Amazon warehouse in Illinois. Officials in Edwardsville, Ill., said on Sunday that there were no more reports of people missing inside the Amazon facility, but search efforts for additional victims continued.

Mr. Beshear braced the public for more deaths to be announced in the days ahead. At least four counties in Kentucky have death tolls “in double digits,” Mr. Beshear said. “The best that I think we can hope for would be the fifty, but I think it’s going to be significantly worse than that.”

“We’re still finding bodies,” and “we’ve got cadaver dogs in towns that they shouldn’t have to be in,” Mr. Beshear said.

In Warren County, where about 12 people were killed, including several children, the process of identifying victims has been slowed because the people who could make those identifications are themselves recovering from injuries sustained in the storm, according to the county coroner, Kevin Kirby.

“There’s a lot of people injured and in hospitals,” Mr. Kirby said in an interview on Sunday afternoon.

The largest of the tornadoes that ripped through six states will, according to Mr. Beshear “ultimately be the longest tornado in certainly U.S. history, from the point where it touched down to when it finally picked back up.”

Of the tornado’s more than 220 miles of destruction, he said, “200 of them are in my state, with our people who have suffered from it.”

At least three tornadoes were believed to have hit Kentucky on Friday night, the governor said, before adding that, “I think we now believe many, many more.”

At least 300 National Guard members were deployed in the state, the governor said. They are, he said, “going door-to-door, though many of these communities don’t have doors anymore. They’re going rubble to rubble,” looking for survivors and other victims.

More than $2 million had been donated to help with recovery efforts, the governor said. The first tranche of grants would be given to help cover funeral costs, he said.

The tornadoes tore through parts of Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee, said Bill Bunting, the operations chief at the Storm Prediction Center, part of the National Weather Service.

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Deadly Tornadoes Slam Six States

A massive search-and-rescue operation is underway after several tornadoes ripped through Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, Mississippi and Tennessee.

“This has been the most devastating tornado event in our state’s history. And for those that have seen it, what it’s done here in Grace County and elsewhere, it is indescribable.” “Everywhere along the line of this tornado that touched down and stayed down for 227 miles over 200 in Kentucky has been severely and significantly impacted.” “I have talked to the secretary of Homeland Security, while I have been here, he has pledged his full support and we are hearing that from every part of the federal administration and from our U.S. senators and from our congressmen.

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A massive search-and-rescue operation is underway after several tornadoes ripped through Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, Mississippi and Tennessee.CreditCredit...William Widmer for The New York Times

The Amazon warehouse is located in Edwardsville, Ill., a small city across the Mississippi River from St. Louis. A direct hit from a tornado around 8:30 on Friday night caused two of the building’s 40-foot-high concrete walls to collapse, officials said.

“We don’t expect that anyone could be surviving,” said James Whiteford, the chief of the Edwardsville Fire Department. The chief said that the tornado had come at the time of a shift change and that it was unclear how many people would have been in the building.

Scenes of the damage in Kentucky.

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What to know about the deadly tornado outbreak.

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The Dawson Village Apartments complex in Dawson Springs, Ky., which sustained catastrophic damage after the tornado.Credit...William Widmer for The New York Times

What happened?

A tornado outbreak tore through six states on Friday night: Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee.

The tornadoes were part of a weather system that also caused substantial snowfall across parts of the upper Midwest and western Great Lakes.

Scores of people died.

At least 88 people across five states were killed. Most of the dead were in Kentucky, where the confirmed death toll on Tuesday afternoon was 74, including at least eight at a candle factory in Mayfield that was demolished. Gov. Andy Beshear said on Tuesday that 122 people were still unaccounted for. “I still expect that we will find at least some more bodies,” he said at a news conference.

The dead in Kentucky ranged in age from 2 months to 98 years old.

In Illinois, a tornado caused the walls and roof of an Amazon warehouse in Edwardsville to collapse, killing six people. At least four people in Tennessee were killed, as well as two in Arkansas and two in Missouri.

What’s next?

President Biden flew to Kentucky on Wednesday to tour the damage.

The tornadoes, which included the largest in Kentucky’s history, mangled many communities beyond recognition, and officials cautioned that recovery would be slow.

Federal and officials in Illinois said on Monday that they would investigate the collapse of the Amazon delivery depot in Edwardsville. Amazon officials have defended their safety procedures.

Early estimates of damage and economic losses have ranged into the billions. Corelogic, a property information and analytics company, estimated that nearly 15,000 structures were damaged or destroyed throughout the storms’ path, at a cost of $3.7 billion.

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‘A Nightmare’: Kentucky Tornado Victims Sort Through Rubble

Residents of Princeton, Ky., sifted through debris for salvageable items and cherished belongings after a tornado destroyed dozens of homes on Friday night.

“People that we know, just pictures in our yard, that don’t even live around here. Street signs in the back of the yard, I mean, it’s just, it’s literally a nightmare. A nightmare.” “Me and my dad and my little sister were in our basement, in the living room, and all of a sudden the lights just go out and we felt the pressure from it. Our ears were popping, and my little sister was just in a panic. Everybody was in a panic. My dad headed upstairs, and can barely get the basement door open. We came out to this and just — everybody was speechless when we saw it in daylight the next day.” “My mom is kind of one of the stubborn ones, and when she saw there was tornado watches, she said, ‘Oh, we’ll go on the front porch and see if we can hear the sirens.’ Right there is the front porch. Luckily, we had a half-basement, so that saved my mom and my boy, so. People ask me, ‘What do we do?’ I don’t know, I’ve never done this, you know? My middle boy is a wrestler, a state-qualifier wrestler, since he was in fifth grade. He had a whole wall full of plaques and medals and trophies. We’re trying to find them. It don’t matter who you are or where you’re from. People that don’t even know you is looking for your personal stuff and helping you find the things that mean a lot. I was sitting here. and they rolled in this morning, and they’ve been here working their tails off. It’s not a community, it’s a family.” “Come over here and join hands. We can make the circle bigger. How many of you believe God’s been good to you today?” “Amen.” “Let’s go.” “If you’re here, I know a lot of you lost your homes right now. Obviously, this is what I grew up in. It’s gone. But this isn’t gone. Each other. We know that for some reason, this was allowed to happen in some weird way and that out of it, good things are going to happen.” “Give God praise.”

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Residents of Princeton, Ky., sifted through debris for salvageable items and cherished belongings after a tornado destroyed dozens of homes on Friday night.CreditCredit...Yousur Al-Hlou/The New York Times

Did climate change play a role?

Scientists have been able to draw links between a warming planet and hurricanes, heat waves and droughts, attributing the likelihood that climate change played a role in individual isolated events. The same can’t be said for tornadoes.

“For a lot of our questions about climate change and tornadoes, the answer is we don’t know,” said Harold Brooks, a senior research scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Although severe tornadoes are rare in December, Friday’s cluster was not unprecedented. Similar destructive storms have hit parts of the United States in December in 2000, 2015, 2018 and 2019.

It’s the latest challenge for Kentucky.

The aftermath of the tornadoes has compounded what was already a challenging year in Kentucky.

In February, a powerful ice storm downed trees and cut off power to 150,000 people in eastern Kentucky. In July, a flash flood left people stranded in their homes. Autumn brought a frightening spike in the coronavirus that made the pandemic “as bad in Kentucky as it has ever been,” Mr. Beshear said.

‘The scariest moment in my life.’ A candle factory survivor recalls the moment the tornado hit.

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Search and rescue crews work at the Mayfield Consumer Products candle factory early Sunday in Mayfield, Ky.Credit...Ryan C. Hermens/Lexington Herald-Leader, via Associated Press

MAYFIELD, Ky. — In the first video Isaiah Holt posted on Snapchat on Friday evening, he walked around the candle factory where he worked, sipping on pink lemonade as a siren howled behind him. “My only question,” he said, joking, “is do I still get my lunch break in 15 minutes.”

In the next video, Mr. Holt is pinned to the ground, a coating of dust and a painful grimace on his face. In the series of videos that followed, rescuers’ radios beep in the distance and the co-workers he had huddled together with could be heard gasping. “They’re trying to get us,” Mr. Holt, 32, said, pausing to spit out dust that had gotten in his mouth. Still, he feared he would not make it.

“I love y’all,” he said as he held his cellphone’s camera up to his face. “Every one of y’all, I love y’all. I’m sorry.”

Hours later, he was in a hospital room in Nashville. One of his lungs was bruised. Ribs were broken. But he was alive, and for that, he was grateful. “I’ve seen better days,” he said in a telephone interview, as a nurse checked his vital signs and brought him apple juice. “I’m not missing any limbs and I’m not dead.”

He questioned whether he should have gone in for that night shift. He also questioned if the company, Mayfield Consumer Products, should have even stayed open in light of the bad weather. Still, he reported for his evening shift at 5 p.m. on Friday at the plant where he works in the wax and fragrance department, where he mixes the chemicals to pour into kettles to make candles. He had gotten the job two months ago through a temporary worker service. “They paid well. They gave a lot of leeway to people,” he said.

As the warnings grew increasingly dire, he said, some of his co-workers were still joking around. “Everybody is looking at their phones,” he said. “My phone’s saying there’s a tornado, they’ve seen one. People were still taking it lightly.”

“Hey, man,” he told one co-worker, “get underneath this and ball up.” He heard the wind and rain come and then it all seemed to happen in a flash.

He shoved his older brother, who also works at the factory, to the ground and grabbed a few others who were trying to run away. They sought cover behind the towering racks holding the buckets of chemicals used to give the candles their scents. “I’ve been deployed, done tours,” Mr. Holt said, noting that he had served in the U.S. Army and was a door gunner on a Chinook helicopter. “This is the scariest thing I’ve been through in my life because there’s nothing you can do. You’re at the mercy of somebody else and you hope they care enough to get you out. That was the scariest moment in my life.”

He believes his military training saved him. “I went into that mode of ‘I might be losing a leg, I might be losing an arm, but I will survive,’” he recalled.

He was grateful to emerge intact, pulled from the rubble at around 2 a.m. on Saturday. Still, he worried. His brother had been taken to a hospital in Paducah, their hometown, almost 30 miles from the factory. Bricks had fallen on his neck and he’d had trouble breathing. “I still don’t know all the severity of all that,” Mr. Holt said from his own hospital bed.

He was waiting for a cousin who was driving to Nashville to see him and fill him in on his brother’s condition. “I’m pretty sure he’s messed up real bad.”

Finally, by Saturday evening, his phone’s battery was recharged. He had been bombarded by messages. “Now that I look, everybody is like, ‘you made me cry, I thought you was dead for real,’” he said. “I thought I was dead. That’s why I made the video.”

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‘If it wasn’t my son, it would have been my husband.’

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Clearing debris from the Amazon warehouse in Edwardsville, Ill., on Saturday.Credit...Neeta Satam for The New York Times

Carla Cope and her husband spoke to their son, Clayton Cope, 29, by phone on Friday night as a tornado veered toward the Amazon warehouse in Edwardsville, Ill., where Mr. Cope was working. He assured his parents that he and other workers were on their way to the tornado shelter on site.

About 10 minutes later, the tornado struck the warehouse, sending the walls crashing down.

The Copes tried numerous times to reach their son again by phone and eventually drove to the warehouse from their home in Brighton, Ill., a half-hour away.

“When we pulled up to the building it was pretty devastating,” said Ms. Cope. “There were trucks and rescue vehicles everywhere, a lot of chaos.”

Their son, they learned, was among at least six people killed when the building was hit.

When her husband saw the damage to the warehouse, he immediately feared the worst, Ms. Cope said. He works the same job as a maintenance mechanic that Mr. Cope did, splitting the night shifts with his son, except on Wednesdays, when the two work together. He knew that their son was likely to have been in the part of the building that collapsed.

“If it wasn’t my son, it would have been my husband,” said Ms. Cope.

The couple waited at the warehouse until 4:30 a.m., when officials finally informed them that they had recovered their son’s body.

“There’s just really no words to describe it when they tell you your son’s dead,” said Ms. Cope, her voice cracking. “It’s surreal, unbelievable, devastating.”

On the phone before the tornado struck, Mr. Cope didn’t sound scared, Ms. Cope said. She imagines that her son, whom she described as having a “big heart,” had left the shelter to try to help a co-worker. On the phone, he had said that he needed to make sure everyone knew to take shelter.

Mr. Cope had worked at the warehouse for a year. Previously, he spent six years in the Navy, including deployments to the Mediterranean, before he was given an honorable discharge five years ago. He loved to ride his motorcycle and go fishing, said Ms. Cope, and spend time with his hound dog, Draco. He would often come to his parents’ house — about a 10-minute drive from his house in Alton, Ill. — to cook dinner together.

“It’s a horrible tragedy,” said Ms. Cope. “That’s about all I can say at this point.”

At Amazon site search efforts continue as victims are identified.

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An Amazon employee looking at the damage of a roof collapse at an Amazon distribution center in Edwardsville, Illi., on Sunday.Credit...Lawrence Bryant/Reuters

Search and recovery efforts at an Amazon delivery depot in Edwardsville, Ill., continued on Sunday, as the company and officials pieced together what happened on Friday evening when a ferocious tornado ripped through the building.

Mike Fillback, Edwardsville’s police chief, released the names of the six people who died at the facility, who ranged in ages from 26 to 62.

“There are no additional reports of people missing,” he said in a news release. “Search efforts continue, to ensure that there are no additional victims.”

Workers sheltered in two places when the tornado hit the warehouse, and “one of the areas was directly struck by the tornado,” Kelly Nantel, an Amazon spokeswoman, said on Sunday.

Ms. Nantel said based on preliminary interviews, the company believed about 11 minutes lapsed between first warning of the tornado and when it touched down. “I’m told it formed in the parking lot and hit and dissipated,” she said.

The building serves as a delivery depot, where Amazon employees sort packages for delivery to customers. The packages are loaded into vans, driven by contractors, who fan out in the local area to make deliveries for the day. About 190 people, including contractors, work at the site across all of its shifts, Ms. Nantel said.

The tornado struck around 8:30 p.m. on Friday, when drivers returned from their shifts delivering packages to customers. “Drivers are coming back from routes, returning vans, unpacking vans, walking out to cars,” she said. “It is a busy time.”

Emergency crews were deconstructing the damaged structure, and four semi trucks brought in dumpsters for debris.

Ms. Nantel said a large Amazon fulfillment center almost directly across the street from the delivery depot was not hit by the tornado and was closed Saturday and Sunday. She said the other facility in town, another delivery station, remained open.

The Madison County Coroner identified the six victims as Deandre S. Morrow, 28, of St. Louis, Mo.; Kevin D. Dickey, 62, of Carlyle, Ill.; Clayton Lynn Cope, 29, of Alton, Ill.; Etheria S. Hebb, 34, of St. Louis, Mo.; Larry E. Virden, 46, Collinsville, Ill.; and Austin J. McEwen, 26, of Edwardsville.

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At least six people died after a tornado tore through an Amazon warehouse in Edwardsville, Ill., on Friday.CreditCredit...Maxar

At a Sunday morning service, clergy and members of Thrive Church, located about 10 miles from the Amazon warehouse, were trying to make sense of the disaster. After a pastor asked for prayers for the loved ones of those who died, Paul Reagan, a retired steelworker, raised his hand and asked why workers were still in building when the tornado hit.

“There is no reason for us to lose family members because corporate America wants a dollar,” Mr. Reagan said. Thrive has members who work at another nearby Amazon facility.

“Lord, I hear your call and my echo is frustration, is anger, Lord, on behalf of laborers who we do not value enough to protect in the ways that we should,” Sharon Autenrieth, a pastor, said during the service. “It’s not lost on me, Lord, that this was an Amazon warehouse, and I, like so many other people in this country, get irritated if I can’t get my Christmas gifts in three days from Amazon,” said Ms. Autenrieth. “Help me to put people before profit, before convenience and before this huge system that all of us are ensnared in.”

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In Kentucky, a growing Latino community is hard hit.

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People embrace next to wreckage from the storm in Mayfield, Ky.Credit...Brendan Smialowski/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

MAYFIELD, Ky. — The power was still out at Primera Iglesia Bautista Hispana, a small church in the town most battered by a series of deadly tornadoes on Friday. But that did not stop Ana Massò, the wife of the pastor, from trying to help neighbors who were left homeless and those who lost loved ones working at “Las Velas,” — “the candles” — the nickname for the candle factory where many perished.

On Sunday morning she directed a group of young people to deliver jamón y queso sandwiches throughout the town and collected donated items such as bottled water and boxed cereal.

“The Latino community was hit hard by this tragedy,” Ms. Massò lamented. “Many don’t know where to go or who to ask for help. It is a really bad situation out there.”

Mayfield is a city of just 10,000 people, and the Latino community, estimated at about 18 percent of the population, is even closer, she said. Immigrants from Mexico and Guatemala and newcomers from Puerto Rico have been arriving in bigger numbers to work in chicken factories, in construction and at Mayfield Consumer Products, the candle factory decimated by a tornado. Ms. Massò said a large portion of them are undocumented workers.

“They really needed the work, and many were drawn to the factory,” she said.

Luis Fabian, a bus driver for the local high school, was driving his red pickup truck around town on Sunday, on a mission to spot people who, because of language barriers, might not know where to seek help.

He spotted a family wearing the traditional clothing of Guatemala looking lost and confused in the middle of a busy road, not far away from the homes and business devastated by the tornado.

Miguel Juarez, 24, and his wife, Santa Pastor, who speak an Indigenous language, explained in broken Spanish that they had been left without a home and needed milk for their child. Mr. Fabian told them he would take them to a shelter.

“I’m glad I found them,” Mr. Fabian said.

Ms. Pastor worked at the candle factory and said that she felt lucky to not have been working on the night of the disaster but worried that she would no longer have a job.

At the church, which is serving as a respite center, families repeatedly came in looking for information on their loved ones. Because many are undocumented and sometimes using a fake name to obtain employment, it has been difficult to locate them at hospitals or morgues, volunteers said.

Vanessa Pineda, 23, said she it took her several hours to locate an aunt by marriage because of the confusion over names. When she finally reached her, she heard a harrowing tale of being covered in debris. “She is relieved that she made it out alive, but she is not well emotionally,” Ms. Pineda said. “We still don’t know how many people died.”

Not far from the church, Angel Romero, 38, watched his wife cook chicken soup and heat up tortillas on a makeshift stove she had fashioned out of throwaway bricks. Mr. Romero, the father of two children ages 8 and 5, looked around his block, which he said he no longer recognized. Inconsolable neighbors were trying to pick up entire trees from their property and walked carefully around downed power cables.

“It looks like a bomb exploded here,” he said.

Mr. Romero, who works at an area ranch, and his family now planned to move in with a brother-in-law who lives in a neighboring town. “This home,” he said, “is unlivable.”

In one Kentucky city, homes and lives were shattered in an instant.

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Residents looking at the damage following a tornado in Bowling Green, Ky., on Saturday.Credit...Gunnar Word/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Amy Moore was awakened at her home in Bowling Green, Ky., early Saturday morning by a litany of cowbell-like alerts going off on her phone. She shook her husband awake and they both got out of bed.

They turned on the television to find out what was happening. “But then WBKO went black, and that’s when I knew something was wrong,” recalled Ms. Moore, 33, who works as a customer service supervisor.

Her husband, Brad, a court security officer for the Warren County Sheriff’s office, opened their front door to see if he could see the storm, but it was too dark.

What they did not know was that a tornado had already touched down right in the heart of Bowling Green, Kentucky’s third-largest city. And it was headed toward their home on Nutwood Street.

They heard it first — like a train whistle, and growing closer by the second.

They grabbed their dogs, a Husky and an Aussie, and piled into the hall closet. Mrs. Moore wrapped her arms around each dog and Brad threw his body on top of hers.

Almost instantly, windows began shattering outside the closet.

They heard parts of the roof being sucked upward and outward, and wood chips and debris started falling on them. A mini-cyclone of shingles swirled around their bedroom, scratching up the walls. And then, silence.

Brad recalled how, still holding his wife in the closet after the noise subsided, he had teared up as he told her how grateful he was that he had not lost her.

When the couple emerged, they found all their windows blown out and a large hole torn in the middle of their roof. Shingles, pieces of timber and shards of glass strewn all over the floors. But the rest of their home had been spared.

Not everyone in Bowling Green was that fortunate.

Several children were among about a dozen people killed there, according to a county coroner.

A four-month old was killed about 50 miles from Bowling Green in Bremen, Ky.

All of the children that were killed in Bowling Green “were in residential homes, in residential apartments,” Warren County Coroner Kevin Kirby said Sunday afternoon in a telephone interview. Mr. Kirby declined to say precisely how many children were among the dozen killed in the county, but said the victims represented “a broad spectrum of ages.”

“It’s just sad to lose anyone but it’s really sad to lose a child,” Mr. Kirby said. “It’s not supposed to be that way.”

Mike Buchanon, the county judge-executive in Warren County, said at least 500 homes and 100 businesses were destroyed or damaged.

The National Weather Service has classified the tornado that hit Bowling Green as an EF-3 tornado, with winds in excess of 150 miles per hour. It was a separate tornado from the one that struck western Kentucky and Arkansas.

A main business district in the center of Bowling Green along Highway 31-W was among the hardest hit, with local landmarks like the Cardinal Hotel, a throwback single-story motel demolished. An iconic red concrete cardinal statue in front of the motel was untouched, standing sentinel now over piles of wood, roof sheeting and pink insulation.

The National Corvette Motorsports Park was also heavily damaged, as were several warehouses.

Ms. Moore said she considered herself among the more fortunate, since she has family nearby to help.

“Going through this, it’s life-changing,” Ms. Moore said. “It makes you more humble, more appreciative, and now more grateful you are here. All the other stuff, it doesn’t matter. Family is what matters.”

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A brother searches for his missing sister in Mayfield.

MAYFIELD, Ky. — Darryl Johnson got as close as he could to the candle factory. He had called hospitals as far away as Nashville. He tried to check with the authorities. Still, he could not get any answers about where his sister, Janine Johnson-Williams, was, or even whether she was alive.

And so Mr. Johnson went to where he knew she was when a tornado swooped through Mayfield: the Mayfield Consumer Products factory. He did not know what her job was there, exactly. He just knew that was where her husband dropped her off right before her shift.

“I’m prepared for the worst,” Mr. Johnson said, standing on a gravel lot beside what had once been the factory and now looked like a landfill piled with metal and wood. “I’m praying for the best.”

His anxiety, in the moment, was trumped by his fury. The authorities at the scene had not told him anything — “other than to stand back,” he said. He tried to talk to sheriff’s deputies and rescuers from teams that had come from across Kentucky. “Can I look?” he asked. “I can tell you if it’s my sister.”

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Janine Johnson-Williams with her son Joshua.Credit... 

Mr. Johnson, a retired utility lineman who now works in a different factory, showed up to work only to find out that the facility had closed for the storm. He wishes his sister’s job had done the same. He said she had called some family members before the tornado arrived, telling them the storm looked bad.

He had never been to the candle factory before. His cellphone had no reception, so he could not use it for directions. He saw a helicopter overhead and figured it would it was going to the plant or somewhere close, so he just tried to trail it as best as he could. Eventually, get got there.

“She would do it for me,” Mr. Johnson, 55, said.

His sister was married and when she wasn’t working, she was toting around her grandchildren. He believed she was 51 or 52. “If I got that wrong, she’ll forgive me,” he said.

He was persistent in his search because he and Ms. Johnson-Williams were close in the way he believed siblings should be. Their brother died in 2016, so now it was just them.

On Sunday, he said, he was still waiting. “We have nothing to go on,” he said. Still, he tried to cling to hope.

In Dawson Springs, a home ‘folded like an accordion.’

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Lacy Duke, third from left, stands with her family in front of the rubble that was once their home.Credit...William Widmer for The New York Times

About 71 miles northeast of Mayfield, Ky., where tornadoes on Friday night killed dozens of people, ferocious winds flattened whole chunks of the city of Dawson Springs.

Roofs were ripped off houses. Some buildings were completely flattened. Others stood eerily alone amid the debris, according to drone video posted on YouTube on Sunday from WXChasing.

On Sunday, residents were beginning to survey the damage.

Lacy Duke, 32, and her children searched through rubble near where her home stood days ago, looking for two missing cats.

Her daughter Pearlena Hoffhines sat on a side of the house that lay flat on the ground, feeding a stray cat vienna sausages.

A hot pink bike and an Eric Carle counting book lay nearby. A piece of roof was curled around a tree trunk nearby. Ms. Duke’s father, Paul, held up a picture he’d found of Pearlena.

Ms. Duke and her family had yet to shower after surviving the deadly storm and wore clothes from her father’s nearby house. The family had taken shelter in a small storm cellar, huddled together under a Pokémon sleeping bag and blankets. The storm lasted for just 22 seconds, Ms. Duke said. But when it passed, only the storm cellar was still intact.

“It was scary and terrifying,” she recalled. “The noise was unbelievable. There was lightening and the tornado. And when it hit the house, it just collapsed. It folded like an accordion.”

If not for her storm cellar, she said, “we would have died.”

The harrowing ordeal was just the latest episode in a difficult stretch.

Her son contracted Covid-19, she said, and she was hit by a semi-truck in the past year, she said.

Then, around Thanksgiving she was laid off from her job at a factory that makes van and truck frames for General Motors.

“This year’s been rough,” Ms. Duke said.

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A Kentucky town hit by a tornado grapples with loss.

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The footage shows the aftermath of the deadly tornado in Mayfield, Ky.CreditCredit...William DeShazer for The New York Times

MAYFIELD, Ky. — Churches were reduced to rubble. The courthouse was wiped out. A building where the utility company parked its trucks had seemingly vaporized, taking the vehicles with it.

And the candle factory was nothing more than a spread of assorted debris. The only indication of what it once was: The scents of vanilla and lavender, along with aromas that conjured up springtime and fresh laundry — all from the chemicals used in the candles — were picked up by powerful winds.

“I don’t know how Mayfield will rebound,” Joe Crenshaw, 37, said as he stood along the perimeter of the factory on Saturday afternoon, hoping to help, somehow, with efforts to find survivors in the rubble.

Mayfield, a city of roughly 10,000 people perched in the western corner of the state, is a community in shock. One person after the next told harrowing accounts of hiding as the tornado ripped through the town, sounding like a freight train. Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky called it the worst tornado disaster in the state’s history. Of the 110 people working in the candle factory when the tornado hit, he said, just 40 have been rescued.

But amid anguish and worry, there was also gratitude among those who survived.

“By the grace of God, I woke up late,” said Jamal Morgan, 25, who had been scheduled to work an overnight shift at Mayfield Consumer Projects, the candle factory on the southwestern end of town.

Bremen, a Kentucky town of 365 residents, mourns the loss of 11.

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Chelsea Emmons holding on to a cat, Marinda, in Bremen, Ky., on Saturday.Credit...Greg Eans/The Messenger-Inquirer, via Associated Press

Alan Miller, the mayor of Bremen, Ky., sat exhausted in his city’s disaster command center. A tornado had killed as many as 11 people in his small town of 365 residents on Friday night, according to the Kentucky State Police. The storm damaged or demolished almost half the homes in the community.

Brian Crick, a District Court judge for two Kentucky counties, was among the dead, according to a statement from the Kentucky Supreme Court. Officials were not yet releasing the names or ages of others killed by the tornado, but the state police said the dead ranged in age from 4 months to 75 years old.

Bremen (pronounced BREE-mun), about 60 miles west of Bowling Green, is known chiefly for its cattle farms. Every person who died was someone Mr. Miller knew. A friend. A neighbor. Family members.

“Last night and this morning, were the absolute hardest and worst days of my life,” Mr. Miller said on Saturday, his eyes welling up. In addition to the loss of life, the landscape of the community is forever changed. The tornado traveled more than 200 miles on Friday night — cutting a path three-quarters of a mile wide and 17 miles long through Muhlenberg County.

Where there were once woods, there are now fields. Where there were homes, there are piles of debris. In some places, slabs of concrete are all that remain where the house was lifted off the foundation.

Mr. Miller and crews of volunteer firefighters, emergency management personnel and community volunteers worked tirelessly over 36 hours to clear debris and search for survivors and casualties. On Saturday night, all the residents were accounted for, Mr. Miller said.

The same closeness that has made the losses hard to take has also given the residents of Bremen a source of strength. Immediately after the tornado on Friday night, more than 200 people, including many from surrounding communities, gathered at the volunteer fire department to offer their services — before anyone had even asked for help.

“They all wanted to know, where can we go, and what can we do,” said Lexie Miller, a volunteer firefighter who is Mr. Miller’s daughter.

A search and rescue team from Sturgis, Ky., also arrived within the hour. Volunteers worked Saturday to clear roads so emergency personnel could access every address and check on its residents. Donations of clothing and food rolled in from across Kentucky and from as far away as South Carolina. Emergency crews said they now needed items to help with cleanup: tarps, trash bags, gloves, oil and gas for chain saws, and empty boxes for residents collect salvaged belongings.

Rebuilding is expected to take months, but residents like Lindsay Phelps know that some things can’t be rebuilt.

“I would have looked at everything more closely on Friday if I’d known it would be the last time I’d see those houses and trees and buildings,” Mrs. Phelps said. “Our town will never be the same.”

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How common are tornadoes in December?

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Salvaging items from a home that was hit by a tornado in Garland, Texas, on Dec. 28, 2015.Credit...Cooper Neill for The New York Times

Although severe tornadoes are rare in December, the cluster that hit at least six states on Friday was not unprecedented.

Here’s a roundup of some notable tornadoes and tornado clusters that have hit the United States in December.

2000

A band of tornadoes ripped across Alabama, killing 12 people; the deadliest of the storms struck a Tuscaloosa trailer park and an upscale neighborhood nearby.

2015

Tornadoes pummeled Mississippi, Tennessee and several other states before Christmas, causing more than a dozen deaths, and reducing homes and businesses to rubble.

Dallas also experienced a deadly outbreak of nearly a dozen tornadoes later that week that left 13 people dead, according to a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration database, sweeping across more than 100 miles. It was the deadliest tornado system to hit the Dallas area since 1927, the National Weather Service wrote in a post on Twitter at the time.

2018

Stormy weather coincided with the Christmas season again, when a rare tornado touched down in Port Orchard, just west of Seattle, and several low-intensity tornadoes touched down in Florida, damaging more than 70 homes in a mobile home park.

Earlier that month, tornadoes also swept through central and southwest Illinois; at the time, the National Weather Service called it the state’s largest December outbreak since 1957.

On the same day, a tornado struck a motel in Lawrence County, Mo., according to the NOAA database, leaving one man dead.

2019

A day of multiple tornadoes mid-month, across four Southern states, left three people dead, according to the NOAA database, in Lawrence County, Ala., and Vernon Parish, La.

‘We’re going to grieve, and then we’re going to rebuild.’ Beshear, McConnell and other officials react to deadly storms.

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Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky in Frankfort, Ky., last month.Credit...Jonathan Cherry/Reuters

In states affected by Friday’s powerful tornadoes, officials expressed shock at the devastation left by the storms, which killed at least 90 people.

In Kentucky, where at least 80 people were confirmed dead, Gov. Andy Beshear said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday morning that the devastation was like nothing the state had seen before.

“We’re going to grieve, and then we’re going to rebuild,” he said.

On Saturday, as Mr. Beshear toured some of the hardest-hit places, he paused at times, unable to describe the sheer scale of damage. “The level of devastation is unlike anything I have ever seen,” he said. He called it the most devastating tornado event in Kentucky history.

In Arkansas, where at least two people died from the storms, Gov. Asa Hutchinson said on “Face the Nation” that the tornado “hit multiple towns, causing enormous loss of homes and businesses.” He estimated that hundreds of homes had been “totally destroyed.”

“So the recovery is going to be longer,” Mr. Hutchinson said.

U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, of Kentucky, said in a statement on Saturday that he was “praying for the lives lost and communities impacted by the tornado devastation throughout the Commonwealth.”

Gov. Bill Lee of Tennessee, where at least four people died, said that when a powerful tornado strikes, “we’re reminded that in just a moment, lives are lost, livelihoods are lost and lives are changed forever.”

In Illinois, at least six people were killed at an Amazon warehouse in Edwardsville. Gov. J.B. Pritzker asked on Twitter for people to “take a moment to offer a prayer for the Edwardsville community and especially for the families who are grieving today.”

James Whiteford, the chief of the Edwardsville Fire Department, said on Saturday that officials did not expect “that anyone could be surviving” at the warehouse.

In a speech on Saturday afternoon in Delaware, where he was spending the weekend, President Biden said his administration would do “everything it can possibly do to help” the states that had sustained serious damage in the tornado outbreak.

“This is likely to be one of the largest tornado outbreaks in our history,” he said, adding that he had approved the emergency declaration that was requested by Mr. Beshear of Kentucky.

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Here is what we know about tornadoes and climate change.

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Damage to a church in the aftermath of a tornado that struck Idabel, Okla., earlier this month.Credit...LM Otero/Associated Press

Forecasters warned that parts of the South could experience strong tornadoes on Tuesday, as severe thunderstorms in the lower and mid-Mississippi Valley and other areas produce damaging hail and powerful gusts of wind.

Scientists have been able to draw links between a warming planet and hurricanes, heat waves and droughts, attributing the likelihood that climate change played a role in individual isolated events. The same can’t be said for tornadoes yet.

Even as scientists are discovering trends around tornadoes and their behavior, it remains unclear the role that climate change plays. “For a lot of our questions about climate change and tornadoes, the answer is we don’t know,” said Harold Brooks, a senior research scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Severe Storms Laboratory. “We don’t see evidence for changes in average annual occurrence or intensity over the last 40 to 60 years.”

What causes a tornado?

Tornadoes form inside large rotating thunderstorms and the ingredients have to be just right. Tornadoes occur when there is a perfect mix of temperature, moisture profile and wind profile.

When the air is unstable, cold air is pushed over warmer humid air, creating an updraft as the warm air rises. When a wind’s speed or direction changes over a short distance, the air inside the clouds can start to spin. If the air column begins spinning vertically and rotates near the ground, it can intensify the friction on Earth’s surface, accelerating the air inward, forming a tornado.

How are they measured?

Like hurricanes and earthquakes, tornadoes are rated on a scale. The Enhanced Fujita, or EF, scale runs from 0 to 5.

The National Weather Service warned that storms on Tuesday in parts of the lower Mississippi Valley region and Mid-South could produce tornadoes with an EF rank of at least 3, meaning their gusts could exceed 136 miles per hour.

Because it’s challenging to measure the winds in a tornado directly, surveyors usually evaluate tornadoes by their level of damage to different structures.

For instance, they may look to see if the damage is limited to missing roof shingles or whether entire sections of roofs or walls are missing. Based on the level of damage, scientists then reverse-engineer the wind speeds and assign a tornado a rating on the scale.

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Damage to a neighborhood in Round Rock, Texas, after tornadoes ripped through in March 2022.Credit...Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman, via Associated Press

Have tornadoes changed over the years?

Researchers say that in recent years tornadoes seem to be occurring in greater “clusters,” and that the region known as tornado alley in the Great Plains, where most tornadoes occur, appears to be shifting eastward. The overall number of tornadoes annually is holding steady around 1,200.

In December 2021, a burst of deadly tornado activity across central and southern states came at a highly unusual time for the United States. March, with its warmer weather, is typically when tornado activity starts to increase.

Is climate change the cause?

The ingredients that give rise to tornadoes include warm, moist air at ground level; cool dry air higher up; and wind shear, which is the change in wind speed or direction. Each of these factors may be affected differently by climate change.

As the planet warms and the climate changes, “we don’t think they are all going to go in the same direction,” said Dr. Brooks of NOAA. For instance, overall temperature and humidity, which provide energy in the air, may rise with a warming climate, but wind shear may not.

“If there is not enough shear to make something rotate, it doesn’t matter how strong the energy is,” he said. “If there is all kind of wind shear, but you don’t have a storm, you won’t get a tornado, either.”

Although we know that climate change may be playing a role in making some storms more powerful, the complexity of tornadoes means that it is hard to extend that connection with certainty, especially for an individual event.

Scale is everything

A tornado’s relatively small size also makes it harder to model, the primary tool that scientists use when attributing extreme weather events to climate change. “We are working at such small scales that the model you would use to do the attribution studies just can’t capture the phenomenon,” Dr. Brooks said.

Kentucky police can’t find an inmate who escaped from a hospital after the storm.

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Emergency workers searched through what is left of the Mayfield Consumer Products Candle Factory in Mayfield, Ky., on Saturday.Credit...John Amis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

In the aftermath of the storm, the authorities aren’t just trying to find survivors — they’re also looking for an escaped inmate.

A Graves County jail inmate, 44-year old Francisco Starks, had been one of the prisoners working at the candle-making factory in Mayfield, Ky., where the tornado ripped through the building, trapping about 110 of its workers.

Mr. Starks and several other inmates from the county jail had been at the factory, along with a jail employee who supervised them, as part of a work-release program, according to the jail.

He became one of just 40 people rescued from the building, as dozens of other workers died.

After being rescued, officials took Mr. Starks to Jackson Purchase Medical Center. It was after being treated, that he simply “walked away from the hospital,” according to Kentucky State police.

It isn’t the first time an inmate escaped while working at the candle factory, according to police spokeswoman, Sarah Burgess. The police previously located another inmate, as part of the work-release program, who left the factory in the middle of the work day.

Ms. Burgess believes that Mr. Starks slipped through because of the chaos in the immediate aftermath of the storm.

“When he’s on a work-release, he’s not physically handcuffed, or anything,” she said. “And in the aftermath of everything, I would believe that there was not a jailer present with him, and we didn’t have an ID immediately available.”

The police department, which is now launching an investigation to find Mr. Starks, hopes to find him soon.

“Honestly, he’s not our primary focus,” Ms. Burgess said, adding that the authorities are now focused on helping people first.

Mr. Starks had been at the jail for non-violent offenses including burglary, theft and receiving stolen property.

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When a warning is not enough.

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The storm lifted freight train cars from their tracks and destroyed homes in rural Hopkins County, Ky.Credit...William Widmer for The New York Times

Unlike with hurricanes, there are no ways to predict with relative certainty the arrival and ferocity of tornadoes.

But as officials reviewed preparations for the devastating tornadoes that ravaged the nation’s midsection Friday, many said that if anything went wrong before the storms hit, it was more a lack of response to warnings than a lack of information about the dangers.

Severe weather warnings began on Thursday and were issued throughout Friday in a host of states. Sirens woke residents in some areas late Friday and early Saturday to warn them that a tornado was near and that they should take shelter away from windows.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas on Sunday cited the “importance of the early warning system, the sirens, and taking action whenever you hear that.” In his state, one person died at a nursing home, a comparatively low death toll that Mr. Hutchinson called “a miracle.”

In Tennessee, where three people were killed, Gov. Bill Lee said at a news conference on Saturday that the toll was not higher because “people were prepared.”

“There was a very strong warning effort in many of the communities,” Mr. Lee said. “The residents of these communities were notified of the danger and notified of the imminence of these storms and, in many cases, we know that there were significant evacuations in the communities.”

Of course, even good preparation can’t negate the capriciousness of volatile and unpredictable storms. But meteorologists were issuing warnings to residents early on Friday across the six states where tornadoes appeared to touch down. In Kentucky, the hardest-hit state, forecasters said on Thursday and throughout Friday that severe weather was likely Friday night.

In Mayfield, Ky., where several people were killed at a candle factory, workers who survived began to ask why they had been left to work inside the building when everyone knew that severe weather was coming.

Workers at the candle factory described hearing sirens on and off throughout the night. The tornado hit after a day of increasingly urgent warnings — by 3 p.m., the local National Weather Service office in Paducah, Ky., said that “several strong tornadoes” were “likely.” And by 8 p.m., the agency said people needed to have a “shelter-in-place plan.”

Isaiah Holt, 32, was on his shift in the wax and fragrance department when he heard sirens. A little more than a day later, on Sunday, he was in a hospital bed in Nashville, aching from a bruised lung and broken ribs and worrying about his brother, who also worked at the factory. His brother had been showered with bricks when the building collapsed.

Mr. Holt questioned whether the company should have kept people working after tornado warnings were issued. “They should have just canceled,” he said.

For some structures, warnings were not enough to prevent damage.

In Edwardsville, Ill., home to an Amazon warehouse where six people were killed, a tornado watch was in effect by midafternoon, and it became a tornado warning before 9 p.m. local time, with radar capturing the destructive tornado not long after.

At the Amazon facility, workers sheltered in two places. An Amazon spokeswoman, Kelly Nantel, said “the company calculated that about 11 minutes elapsed between the first warning of a tornado and when it hit the delivery station.”

One of the two areas was “directly struck by the tornado,” she said.

How to help victims of the tornadoes.

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Damian Smith removed items from his father’s destroyed apartment in Dawson Springs, Ky., on Monday.Credit...William Widmer for The New York Times

The recovery efforts are just beginning for those in the path of the devastating tornadoes that tore through six states on Friday night. Local and national volunteers and aid groups are prepared to rescue and feed and give shelter to those who have been affected by the storms, which killed at least 90 people.

The tornado outbreak created almost unfathomable levels of destruction across Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee, the authorities said. From a flattened candle factory in Kentucky to a ravaged Amazon warehouse in Illinois, the storms showed no mercy for those who were in its path. Kentucky in particular was hit hard by the storms.

Here are some ways you can help relief efforts.

Before you give, do your research.

Before you make a donation, especially to a lesser-known organization, you should do some research to make sure it is reputable. Sites like Charity Navigator and Guidestar grade nonprofits based on transparency and effectiveness. The Internal Revenue Service also allows you to search its database to find out whether an organization is eligible to receive tax-deductible contributions. And if you suspect an organization or individual of committing fraud, you can report it to the National Center for Disaster Fraud, part of the Justice Department.

Here are some local groups that are pitching in.

Blood Assurance, which collects blood donations across its locations in the South, is asking people to make appointments because of a “critical need” for supply in Tennessee and Kentucky.

For people in the area of Bowling Green, Ky., the Bowling Green Fire Department is seeking volunteers to help with recovery efforts. Send the department a Facebook message with your name, contact information and the type of assistance you can provide.

Brother’s Brother Foundation, a Pittsburgh-based organization that provides disaster relief, is accepting donations so it can donate to food banks in Arkansas and Kentucky. It is also sending items to victims and emergency crews in affected areas.

Kentucky Baptist Convention, an organization of Baptist groups, is raising funds to help its teams on the ground in affected areas of the state.

Kentucky Branded, a clothing store in Lexington, is donating all of the proceeds from the sales of its “Pray for Kentucky” T-shirt to communities affected by the tornadoes. The shirt costs $20.

The Kentucky State Police in Mayfield are asking interested volunteers to call 270-331-1979.

Taylor County Bank in Campbellsville, Ky., is accepting donations by mail to its fund for tornado victims. Its mailing address is P.O. Box 200 Campbellsville, Ky., 42719.

The Team Western Kentucky Tornado Relief Fund, created by Gov. Andy Beshear, is collecting donations for victims in the western portion of the state.

Some national organizations are helping out.

AmeriCares, a health-focused relief and development organization, has sent an emergency response team to Kentucky and has offered assistance to health care facilities in several states. The organization is accepting donations to help fund these efforts.

CARE, an organization that works with impoverished communities, is collecting money to provide food, cash and clean water to the tornado victims.

Convoy of Hope, an organization that feeds the hungry, is asking for donations to help the survivors across the affected states.

A Feeding America location in Kentucky is raising funds to help provide people with “ready-to-eat bags of food.”

Global Empowerment Mission, a disaster-relief organization, has partnered with local groups and is raising money to help its team on the ground in Kentucky.

GoFundMe has created a centralized hub with verified fund-raisers to help those affected by the tornadoes. It will be updated with new fund-raisers as they are verified.

International Medical Corps, an organization that provides emergency medical services, is raising funds to give people shelter and essential items.

The Red Cross has opened shelters and is asking people to make appointments to give blood. Both its national arm and its local chapter in Western Kentucky are collecting donations.

The Salvation Army is soliciting donations to help tornado victims in Arkansas, Kentucky and Tennessee.

Team Rubicon, a disaster-relief organization, is raising money to help its team of military veterans and volunteers clear roads in Western Kentucky.

The United Way of Kentucky is asking for donations to provide support services for families in the state who were affected by the tornadoes.

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