could see the pockets of blocks where houses were completely leveled. you see burned out property lines. right next to homes that were just fine. and we were also seeing the same thing in lewisville, a nearby community, also experiencing real devastation from this event where we would see a burned out lot next to a house standing there still with christmas lights on. so that s an example of how precarious and random those wind gusts behaved. these were hurricane-force winds. we re talking about people who had sometimes hours but in some cases just a few minutes to really pack up the things that mattered to them most. we talked to one person who lives just down the hill. he had to put his children in the car and it took them 2 1/2 hours just to travel about a quarter mile. that s how many people were trying to get out in a hurry, poppy. so it is a real miracle, if truly there are no fatalities, and currently we re not hearing of any, but right now the folks
touch down here in the blue grass state. that label is ef-4. one notch down from the most powerful rating for a tornado. the number of dead has been adjusted to 71. possibly more significantly the number of missing has dropped from around 100 to 59. and the reason is because a lot of unaccounted for was simply due to poor communication. on a day when president biden toured some of the damage. stopping in mayfield, kentucky where the downtown took a direct hit. brick buildings were toppled or. steel. apocalyptic landscape where the house standing and livable. the president promised the federal government would pick up 100 pierce of the tab for everything from search and rescue to debris clean up. even police overtime for the first 30 days. keep the faith we re going to get this done, i promise you the governor is not walking away.
block from my grandparents there is no house standing. it s heartbreaking. to every family mourning, know the entire commonwealth is standing with you. joining me now is the governor of the commonwealth of kentucky andy beshear. thank you very much for coming to the sunday show. thanks for having us on. we are hurting in kentucky right now. but we are strong. we re going to grieve together. we re going to make sure everybody is accounted for in the coming days and then we will rebuild. governor, i understand that there is an update in the number of lives lost in the hurricanes that ripped through the commonwealth. what is that update? well, i know from reports that i get that we ve lost over 80, but i am positive in the end we ll have lost more than 100 of our kentucky citizens, each one a child of god irreplaceable to their family and to their communities. this thing is like something