she works at the candle factory. she worked the day shift, though, when of course these storms rolled through at night. she s waiting to hear from colleagues if they are still alive. of course she s losing hope as the minutes and hours pass by. but this is what we ve been seeing and hearing all day today in mayfield, these survival stories and of course these other stories of people who are just in disbelief, stunned at what their community now looks like, and in many cases they ve lost so much more than their property. they ve lost family and friends and colleagues as well. boris? yeah, that s an important point, brynn. it s hard to encompass the amount of destruction here. but the human toll, the cost of life is so much more and so much harder for this community to bear. brynn gingras in mayfield, thank you so much. we want to share with you now the story of jessie fitz. he works for a van company that s contracted with that candle factory. jessie, thanks for joining us.
way up. he was going up under everything and we got the side door open. and i just followed him. and we just tried to make our way back down to the ground. and as we were going back down, we were accumulating other people. it ended up about seven people behind us as we made it back down to the ground. jessie, that is an incredible story. and you re lucky to be alive. what was going through your mind when you were holding on? as you said, you were death-gripping that seat. what was passing through your mind at the time? well, i actually thought it was over with. i was going to wait for it to be over with. i was counting my blessings. i couldn t believe it. i only had i went to the emergency room because my whole body was sore. but they did x-rays, i got a large scratch up under my arm
helped. jessie fitz, we re grateful that you shared your story with us. and we re glad that you re okay. thank you so much for the time, sir. thank you. of course. we want to get to cnn s nick valencia now. he s in bowling green where a tornado hit that city especially hard. nick, show us what it s like. share with us what you re seeing. reporter: hey there, boris. it is striking to see these images especially with the sun shining down here. it s a gorgeous day, much different than what this community went through just over 24 hours ago. i want to show you this home behind me here. we understand an 89-year-old woman lived here and was at home at the time of the tornado. many people were at home. it hit in the overnight hours. you can see this car just on the side of the home flipped over like a toy. her garage doors are ripped off the hinges. and inside we saw that her christmas tree was still up with