against a political leader involving anonymous packages, threatening letters and raw meat, and it s all over vaccine mandates. welcome to the lead. i m jake tapper. any moment we expect president biden to address the nation from one of the towns hardest hit by the string of deadly tornadoes that ravaged several states and the u.s. last weekend. the president started his visit in mayfield, part of graves county, kentucky, where 21 kentuckians are confirmed dead so far. biden promised local leaders that not only is the biden administration on the ground to help now. they are committed to helping rebuild as long as it takes, he said. mr. biden also saying he s in awe of how these communities have come together in the wake of such destruction. just came out of nowhere to help as a community. and that s what we re supposed to be doing. that s what america is supposed to be. there s no red tornadoes or blue tornadoes. there s no red states or blue states when this stuff start
roof there is just gone. and that s what it looks like in mayfield as you go block to block. there is destruction like that across the state of kentucky and across the region. it all started friday night with the first twister touching down in arkansas and striking a nursing home. one person died. the governor called incident a miracle as the swarm of twisters tore a path 20 miles across kentucky. a candle factory was leveled with 110 people working a night shift. it s unclear how many were inside at the time. rescuers crawled over the dead to get to the living, a disaster scene. and we know it smelled like scented candles. eight confirmed dead. eight unaccounted for. in dawson springs, kentucky, the death toll stands at 13. there are still 100 people missing there. home after home destroyed. the mayor estimates 75% of the town is gone and described the scene in one word, chaos. right now more than 50,000 kentucky residents are without power. 18 counties are reporting damag
united states of america. we need it and we are really grateful for it. 18 are still unidentified. of the ones that we know, the age range is 5 months to 86 years and six are younger than 18. it s just horrific. the national guard is on the ground working with state and local officials to find dozens of residents still not accounted for. while thousands of people who live and work in towns like may field and dawson springs brace for this long road ahead. we had no water within the city limits. all the power was cut just for safety reasons after everything fell. so there s no power within the city limits, and the natural gas has been turned off because of so many leaks. so we have no resources to that. i didn t think anybody knew what happened. i didn t know if they knew that we were hit, and i needed them to know so that somebody could come so they could send people to come and get us because, i mean, look at it. we were under that. it was horrible. it was really, r
the tornadoes were spread. they covered a great deal of land across the midwest. about 30 tornadoes known to have touched down. spanning six states. one lone tornado, at least what we think of one lone tornado took a path through four states, covering 250 miles of countryside, including here where i am in western kentucky. according to nbc news, as of this morning, 15 people are confirmed dead in kentucky, but state officials say the number is probably upward of 70. and the majority of those deaths are likely occurring or have likely occurred at the nearby candle factory. it s a place caused mayfield consumer products, it s about eight minutes from where i am right now. there were roughly 110 people working in that factory at time of the storm, at night. the factory, by the way, had been working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, to meet christmas demand. only 40 of those 110 who were thought to have been in that building have been located so far. we ll be speaking to one of them
incident, and we re hoping to do that. we re now 35 seconds away from launch. this is going to be this is of course blue origin. this is a jeff bezos company. we know that richard branson and elon musk have got projects like this. this is blue origin, jeff bezos s company. let s watch this launch. seven, six, five, four, main engine star . as long as i live, this is never going to get old for me. i can watch launches all the time. this is picture perfect so far. we are, i believe, still awaiting separation, but so far this has gone very well. you saw a drone shot of it, this allowed us to take the takeoff. you see the con trails behind it. this is a view down to earth from the rocket. this is only going to be a ten-minute flight, and they re four minutes into it now. so far going very well, and we hope that continues. it is a little bit of a hope on a day that is filled with tragedy. so at least we got something that we can be happy about today. but we are of course un