According to one employee, several inmates from the Graves County jail participated in the rescue efforts following a big tornado at the Kentucky candle factory that collapsed on Friday night.
Some of the inmates “were working their tails off to get us out,” says Kyanna Parsons-Perez. Parsons-Perez who works at the Kentucky Candle Factory in Mayfield, told Weekend TODAY.
“They were helping,” Parsons-Perez said. “And to see inmates — because you know they could have used that moment to try to run away or anything — they did not. They were there. They were helping us.”
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear stated roughly 40 of the 110 Kentuckians working in the facility at the time of the natural disaster had been rescued in a Sunday morning interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper on State of the Union. He claimed that the bulk of the people who worked there were Mayfield residents.
Beshear, 44, claimed he doesn’t know if anyone else is alive in the factory.
“I’m not sure that we’re going to see another rescue,” he told Tapper, 52. “I pray for it. It would be an incredibly welcome miracle. But I think it’s been since 3:30 yesterday morning that we found a live person.”
The governor also stated that it was his understanding that the facility had a storm plan in place and that most employees were able to take refuge in the building’s safest area.
“But when you see the damage that this storm did — not just there, but across the area — I’m not sure there was a plan that would have worked,” Beshear said.
Over 80 people were killed, according to Beshear, in what he dubbed “the deadliest tornado event” in the Commonwealth’s history. However, he estimates that the death toll would “exceed” 100 people and that recovery will be “slow.”
Tornado at the Kentucky candle factory
“I know people can see the visuals. But that goes on for 12 blocks or more in some of these places. And it’s going to take us time,” he told Tapper.
Beshear added, “[Do] you think you can go door to door to check on people and see if they’re okay? There are no doors! The question is, is there somebody in the rubble of thousands upon thousands of structures. I mean, it is devastating.”
Parsons-Perez described her “extremely scary” encounter to the Weekend TODAY hosts during her visit to the show. She says, “Everything happened so fast. They had us in the area where you go in case there’s a storm, and we were all there and then the lights got to flickering and all of a sudden we felt a gust of [wind], we could feel the wind and then my ears kind of started popping as they would as if you were on a plane.”
“Everything came down on us,” Parsons-Perez recounted after being tossed around by the gales. “All you heard was screams,” she added afterward.
Parsons-Perez said she chose to broadcast live on Facebook after phoning 911 for assistance. Parsons-Perez stated that she thought that by doing so, she would be able to keep people calm as she sought assistance as quickly as possible.
“So [I thought], ‘If I went live, more people would come to try to help us and get us out of there.’ But it was absolutely the most terrifying thing I’ve ever experienced in my life,” she added.