WILMINGTON, DELAWARE (REUTERS) - US President Joe Biden on Saturday (Dec 11) approved an emergency declaration for Kentucky after the state was battered by a swarm of tornadoes that killed at least 70 people.
The storms, which weather forecasters said are unusual in cooler months, demolished a candle factory and a fire station in one Kentucky town, devastated a Missouri nursing home and killed at least two workers in an Amazon.com warehouse in Illinois.
Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear formally requested the declaration on Sunday after the twisters obliterated the small city of Mayfield and destroyed a candle factory.
Mr Biden received the request and approved it on Sunday evening, the administration official said.
The governor said the tornadoes were the most destructive in the state’s history and that even the sturdiest structures of steel and brick were flattened.
One twister tore across 365km of terrain, almost all of that in Kentucky, Mr Beshear said.
The president had previously declared the storms a federal emergency, enabling the Federal Emergency Management Agency to assist in the aftermath as thousands face housing, food, water and power shortages.
But under an emergency declaration assistance is limited to US$5 (S$6.8 million) million, according to the FEMA website.
A major disaster declaration has no such limit and "provides a wide range of federal assistance programs for individuals and public infrastructure, including funds for both emergency and permanent work", FEMA’s website says.
"It's a tragedy. And we still don't know how many lives were lost and the full extent of the damage," Mr Biden told reporters on Saturday.
Asked if he thought climate change played a role in the devastation of the storms, Biden said he would be asking the Environmental Protection Agency and others to take a look.
"Acknowledging that the likelihood of fewer weather catastrophes, absent a continued movement on dealing with global warming, is just not going to happen," he said.
Mr Biden also said a longer-term question, beyond the immediate response, sparked by the disaster for the states and the nation would be about the tornado warning systems.
"One of the questions that is going to be raised, I'm confident, is: What warning was there? And was it strong enough and was it heeded?" Mr Biden said.
Earlier on Saturday, Mr Biden had spoken with the governors of five of the states hit by the storms - Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri and Tennessee - to express condolences and a commitment to delivering aid quickly, according to the White House.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency is sending emergency response personnel, water and other needed commodities to seven states affected, and Mr Biden has ordered a surge of resources to locations with the greatest need that will make other federal resources and personnel available.
