Update | Crews search for the missing after devastating tornadoes

MAYFIELD, Kentucky —
Rescuers in an increasingly bleak search picked through the tornado-splintered ruins of homes and businesses Sunday, including a candle factory that was bustling with night-shift employees when it was flattened.

Kentucky's governor has warned the state's death toll from the outbreak could top 100.

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Factory workers sought refuge in what was supposed to be the safest part of the building, but it may not have mattered because the storm Friday night was so monstrous, Governor Andy Beshear said.

Authorities on Saturday reported rescuing 40 of 110 people in the building at the time, but hopes of finding anyone else alive dwindled rapidly.

“It'll be a miracle if we pull anybody else out of that. It's now 15 feet deep of steel and cars on top of where the roof was,” the governor said on CNN. 

Jeremy Creason, Mayfield's fire chief and emergency services director, said rescuers had to crawl over the dead to get to the living.

A nursing home and an Amazon distribution centre also were smashed in other states in the unusual mid-December swarm of twisters.

“I can tell you from reports that I've received I know we've lost more than 80 Kentuckians. That number is going to exceed more than 100,” Beshear said on the Sunday morning talk shows.

“I've got towns that are gone, that are just, I mean gone. My dad's hometown – half of it isn't standing. It is hard for me to describe. I know people can see the visuals, but that goes on for 12 blocks or more in some of these places.”

He said that going door to door in search of victims is out of the question in the hard-hit areas: “There are no doors.”

The tornado that carved the path of destruction in Kentucky touched down for more than 200 miles (320 kilometres) in the state. Eleven people were reported killed in and around the city of Bowling Green.

If early reports are confirmed, the twister will likely go down perhaps as one of the longest track violent tornadoes in United States history, said Victor Gensini, a researcher on extreme weather at Northern Illinois University.

The storm was all the more remarkable because it came in December when normally colder weather limits tornadoes.

The outbreak also killed at least six people in Illinois, where an Amazon facility in Edwardsville was hit; four in Tennessee; two in Arkansas, where a nursing home was destroyed; and two in Missouri.

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