LEXINGTON, Ky. — Kentucky will investigate safety protocols at the candle factory in Mayfield where eight people were killed when a tornado roared through the area, Gov. Andy Beshear said Tuesday.
But Beshear quickly added that the investigation does not suggest any wrongdoing.
NBC News reported this week that at least four workers in the Mayfield Consumer Products factory Friday night wanted to leave the building after hearing tornado warning sirens but were told they would be fired if they left their shifts early. The facility, which had 110 workers, was leveled by a tornado.
The four told NBC that as many as 15 workers asked managers to let them take shelter at their own homes, only to have their requests rebuffed, the workers said.
Bob Ferguson, a spokesman for Mayfield Consumer Products, denied the allegations in the NBC News report in an interview Tuesday with the Herald-Leader.
“That’s total nonsense,” Ferguson said. “It never happened.”
“If employees at the candle factory believed they needed to leave for safety reasons — not just during Friday’s severe storms but at any time, managers would allow them to do so without fear of punishment, Ferguson said.
“We have become incredibly flexible in order to make our facility an attractive place to work,” he said.
“I’ll give you an example. Employees come to work and, say, they have circumstances that change during the day — say, they need child care, they need to exit for some family reason or any reason at all. The employee is free to do that. Someone comes on, they work three hours on the shift, they need to leave? They’re free to leave. We hope they come on the next day and just resume their job.”
Asked Tuesday about the NBC News report and whether the state is going to investigate, Beshear said the state Division of Occupational Safety and Health Compliance looks at all fatalities that occur in a Kentucky workplace.
“There will be a level of review that will take months,” he said, later noting that such a review usually takes about six months.
“So, yes, you can expect a state agency to be taking a look at that,” said Beshear. “We do this in all of them. It shouldn’t suggest that there was any wrongdoing. What it should give people confidence in is that we will get to the bottom of what happened, and once the investigation is complete to be transparent about it.”
Kyanna Parsons-Perez, a worker at the Mayfield factory for about a month, told the Herald-Leader that she never was told that her job was at risk if she left to go home.
“There wasn’t anything like that conveyed to me —that if I left early, I could possibly lose my job,” she said.
She said the work conditions at the factory were “typical of what you expect in a factory. It was no different from what you expect from any factory.” She previously was an assistant manager at a Family Dollar store and had worked at several factories in the area.
Jennifer Sanchez-Flores, a mother of two who worked at the factory for four years, said the NBC News report was “a lie. Whatever factory worker is saying that, they are lying.”
She said her aunt, Bertha Velasquez, is her supervisor at the factory. “Whenever I’ve told her I don’t feel good or had to stop I’d say ‘hey, I have to go.’ She’d be like ‘are you sure you want to go? Well, I can’t stop you.’”
The candle factory “will never, ever stop anybody from leaving. The only thing they will ever tell them is that they will lose their incentive,” usually a few bucks an hour, said Sanchez-Flores. “The only time they would have told somebody to not leave was when we were in the designated (shelter) area.”
Sanchez-Flores said some people left after the first warning after 6 p.m. last Friday. “They were not denied to leave. I actually ended up taking over for one of the guys in our quality department that had left.”
In a statement Tuesday, the state occupational safety division said it “has been made aware of workplace fatalities that occurred as a result of the catastrophic tornadoes that impacted the Mayfield area. An investigation into the events is under way and could take up to six months to complete.”
Graves County, where the factory is located, recorded 21 deaths from at least five tornadoes that struck the state. A community candle light service was scheduled for Tuesday night at His House Ministries, 1250 State Route 303 in Mayfield, for those who died.
Beshear said Tuesday that the death toll in the state remains at 74, the number he reported Monday afternoon. He said 122 people remain unaccounted for. On Monday, he said 109 people were unaccounted for and he expected that number to increase.
Eight of the dead have not yet been identified or their name has not yet been released publicly, Beshear said. Ages for the fatalities range from 2 months to 98 years. Twelve of the 74 are children.
Nine other Kentucky counties besides Graves have reported tornado-related deaths: 17 in Hopkins, 15 in Warren, 11 in Muhlenberg, four in Caldwell, two in Marshall and one each in Franklin, Fulton, Lyon and Taylor.
Beshear called the tornadoes the “strongest set of tornadoes we have ever seen in Kentucky and what we believe will probably be one of the most devastating tornado events in U.S. history.”
The National Weather Service says the deadliest tornado in Kentucky’s history occurred when 76 people were killed in Jefferson County in 1890.
Beshear said boil-water advisories remain in effect in certain areas and state Emergency Management Director Michael Dossett, who has postponed his retirement to work on the storm damage, said about 18,500 homes in the state are without electricity.
He thanked out-of-state crews that are helping restore power in Kentucky.
Beshear noted that state parks in the area have opened to the homeless.
“As of last night, we provided 152 rooms for displaced residents and 67 additional rooms for first responders,” he said. Persons who need emergency housing should check with local emergency management offices or contact state parks official Andy Kasitz at andy.kasitz@ky.gov. “No one will be turned away,” said the governor.
As of Tuesday, Beshear said, 568 Kentucky National Guard members have been deployed for storm damage work that includes search and rescue efforts, clearing roads, providing traffic control and augmenting law enforcement.
A special fund Beshear has set up to assist individuals impacted by the storms — Team Western Kentucky Tornado Relief Fund — has raised so far $9.89 million from 60,829 donations. Beshear said no administrative fees will be taken from the fund.
He also gave a reminder that his wife, Britainy Beshear, is working this week on a toy drive for children impacted by the severe weather.
Beshear visited the hard-hit community of Bremen in Muhlenberg County Tuesday afternoon with his uncle who lost two cousins in the area. Beshear said his uncle was married to his father’s sister, who died earlier this year. Beshear’s father, former Gov. Steve Beshear, is from Dawson Springs in Hopkins and Caldwell counties.
Beshear is awaiting President Joe Biden to visit Kentucky on Wednesday. The president will be briefed at Fort Campbell before going to Mayfield and Dawson Springs to assess the damage.
Biden has approved an emergency disaster declaration for the state to provide federal aid and a major disaster declaration to help with temporary housing and home repairs.
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