Dawson Springs, Ky is 70 miles away from #Mayfield and was also devastated by the #Tornado #WX pic.twitter.com/kBwBxcxURi
— WxChasing- Brandon Clement (@bclemms) December 11, 2021
by Kerry Dougherty
It’s the drone footage that gets you.
Those silent video clips showing mile after mile of unimaginable devastation. Flattened homes and factories, overturned railroad cars and trucks, trees reduced to toothpicks and debris fields full of the colorful remnants of ordinary peoples’ lives.
And wandering through the Armageddon are people, eyes down, slowly searching. Are they looking for loved ones, mementoes or pets? Impossible to know from the drone’s eye view.
What happened across six states Friday night defies description. Powerful storms spun off even more powerful tornadoes. The one that buzz-sawed across Kentucky was on the ground for a terrifying 200 miles, they say. It flattened a candle factory in Mayfield, where 110 people were working the night shift. One survivor sent out a terrifying Facebook live video while she was trapped under the rubble.
Dozens — at least — died in that factory. As of this writing 90 are confirmed dead across the six states.
A December horror.
As many of us spent the weekend preparing for the holidays it was hard not to think about those who had lost everything.
It’s a good time for charitable giving. The Red Cross is on the ground. So is Catholic Relief. Closer to home, CBN’s Operation Blessing, a non-profit based in Virginia Beach, has already sent its disaster response team to the ravaged areas to assess the situation.
At a time like this, you would think politics would be the last thing on anyone’s mind. But you would be wrong. I stayed off social media Saturday after reading a nasty Tweet from someone with 46,000 followers who uses the handle @NellSco. I didn’t make a screenshot and she eventually deleted her sick comments which essentially said, “Sorry Kentucky, but your two senators are responsible for climate change and you deserved everything you got.”
Imagine what sort of hateful, twisted mind went to that dark place while they were still pulling bodies out of collapsed buildings.
As if there were no tornadoes before Rand Paul was elected.
Fools. They’re everywhere.
She wasn’t the only one who pounced on the climate-change-is-to-blame for these extraordinarily strong tornadoes. Many opportunists, including Joe Biden, invoked climate as a possible cause. Anything to push an agenda.
Stop it.
When a disaster of this magnitude is fresh, when people are dead and dying, save your amateur blame games and your shallow knowledge of science for another day.
One when Americans aren’t suffering.
