The owner of a candle factory in Mayfield, Kentucky, destroyed by a devastating tornado, has revealed that the US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has declared a rescue mission at the plant even as the Kentucky governor said hope was increasingly waning of rescuing more people from the rubble.
"Fortunately, FEMA has still declared this a rescue mission. They're the experts in this situation, and that gives us all hope because, the people of this town and myself, we're in uncharted waters. And that is good news for us", Troy Propes, the owner of the factory said in an interview with Fox News.
The latest report from the scene, where FEMA is working to save as many of the 110 employees trapped under the rubble as it can, said that a total of eight people were confirmed dead. Eight more workers are still considered missing and their fate remains unknown. The rest have already been found and dozens of others have already been rescued.
"While we mourn the loss of the eight that we know of, we celebrate every time that we know that other number [of missing] has gone down", Propes commented on the latest casualty report.
FEMA recently announced that it was in "life-saving, sustaining" mode right now as it combs through the neighbourhoods affected by the disaster to look for survivors. Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear said that in many townships the authorities couldn't even do door-to-door checks to determine who was missing because very often there were "no doors" to knock on.
He added that entire towns had been wiped out by the devastating tornadoes. The latter affected around five US states and are believed to have had one of the longest tracks in US history. These twisters are also said to be some of the deadliest to hit the country, with the Kentucky governor fearing that in his state alone there will be at least 100 fatalities. So far 80 people have been confirmed dead in Kentucky, with several dozen more reported dead in other states.