Tornado-slammed parts of Kentucky face long recovery

Workers, volunteers and members of the National Guard fanned out in areas of Kentucky slammed by a series of tornadoes to begin the long process of recovery, including replacing thousands of damaged utility poles, delivering bottles of drinking water and continuing to search for the dead.

The tornado Friday that killed at least 88 people in five states – 74 of them in Kentucky – cut a path of devastation that stretched from Arkansas, where a nursing home was destroyed, to Illinois, where an Amazon distribution center was heavily damaged.

In Kentucky, Gov. Andy Beshear said the death toll could grow as authorities continued to work around debris that slowed recovery efforts. Nearly 450 National Guard members have been mobilized in the state, and 95 of them are searching for those presumed dead.

“With this amount of damage and rubble, it may be a week or even more before we have a final count on the number of lost lives,” the governor said… (Excerpts from the Washington Times)