‘We never had anything like this here’
Buildings razed, cars overturned, trees ripped from the ground -- there were end-of-the-world scenes in the small Kentucky town of Mayfield.
Stunned and shaken, its residents on Saturday tried to grasp the extent of the damage caused by a series of tornadoes that swept across six US states, killing more than 80 people.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. On Broadway, the main street in this town of 10,000 people, old red brick buildings that were once a source of local pride were shattered by the storm.
Mitchell Fowler's restaurant was a family business for nearly four decades, until the tornado destroyed it. The windows were blown out, the kitchen damaged, the roof torn off, and a section of the exterior wall fell.
On Friday, after a tornado warning from local authorities, Fowler closed the restaurant around 8 pm, told his employees to go home and set off for his own home some 8 miles (13 kilometers) outside town.
"Before I got home, it was gone," Fowler said of the restaurant.
"This was my restaurant, a family business for 38 years, I raised my family here, all my kids work here. It's devastating," Fowler told AFP.
Next to his restaurant, dozens of cars lay upside down or turned to the side.
An old green and white car was miraculously left intact by the storm, but the roof of the garage that housed was gone.
The tornado wreaked havoc over a strip about a kilometer wide, crossing the city from west to east.
Torn electric poles littered the ground.
"It looks like a bomb has exploded in our community," Mayfield resident Alex Goodman told AFP.
"We knew it was coming, but we did not have anywhere to go," said David Norseworthy, 69, a resident who works in construction.
"We never had anything like this here."
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