Tornadoes in Mayfield, Kentucky caused profound losses: ‘Some are never going back to their homes’

As the efforts continue to clean up debris, find victims and restore power, the storm's scale of destruction is astounding

In Mayfield, Kentucky, storm warnings had been coming for days, then came radar observations of a rotating storm of debris to the south, and finally urgent alerts to the imminent strike of a severe tornado.

In the seconds it took for the quad-state" storm to pass over the higher elevations of the city soon after midnight on 10 December, the notional separation between the man-made and natural world was effectively obliterated - as were large sections of Mayfield