Responders are scrambling to rescue people trapped in rubble, overturned vehicles and flattened buildings

“This will be one of the most significant, the most extensive disasters that Kentucky has faced,” Kentucky emergency management director Michael Dossett said, adding this was “one of the darkest days in the state’s history.”

Tornadoes also have been reported in parts of Missouri, Tennessee — where three people were reported killed — and Mississippi.

One of the most devastated sites is the southwestern Kentucky city of Mayfield, where a tornado hit a candle factory Friday night while people were working. About 110 people were inside, Beshear said.

“We believe we’ll lose at least dozens of those individuals,” the governor said.

Video from Mayfield showed what remained of the factory: a massive debris field, largely of twisted metal, several feet high, with rescuers using hands and machines to dig through.

Among the survivors were Kyanna Parsons-Perez, who said workers had been hustled to a safety area before the storm hit. While attendance was being taken, she saw “a little dust of wind.”

“My ears start popping. And it was like the building, we all just rocked back and forth, and then boom — everything fell on us,” Kyanna Parsons-Perez told CNN’s Boris Sanchez.

Pinned by debris with others, she used her phone to broadcast on Facebook Live, and called 911, her mother and a coworker’s relative. She knew rescuers were around only when she could feel pressure from above — people walking on the debris.

“I was screaming like, ‘Sir, can you please just get this so I can move my leg?’ He said, ‘Ma’am, there’s about 5 feet worth of debris on top of you.'”

Rescuers eventually pulled her and others out, she said.

‘Many, many’ people pulled from Kentucky factory

Ivy Williams was at the Mayfield site Saturday, looking for his wife of 30-plus years, who he says was at the factory.

“I hope she’s somewhere safe,” Williams said, through tears. “Please call me … I’m looking for you, baby.”

First responders have pulled “many, many” people out of the rubble, some alive and some apparently dead, storm chaser Michael Gordon told CNN Saturday morning from the scene.

“It’s kind of hard to talk about. … They’re digging in that rubble by hand right now,” Gordon said.

People were working there, as the factory has been “going 24/7” in part to meet Christmastime candle demand, US Rep. James Comer, who represents the area, told CNN.

“It’s changed the landscape … here in Mayfield,” Kentucky State Police Lt. Dean Patterson said. “We’re seeing (destruction) that none of us have ever seen before.”

In a message on Twitter, President Joe Biden called losing a loved one in a storm like the ones that swept across parts of the US early Saturday “an unimaginable tragedy.”

Deaths in Illinois, Arkansas and Tennessee, officials say

Deaths also have been reported in Illinois, Arkansas and Tennessee.

At the collapsed Amazon warehouse in the Illinois city of Edwardsville outside St. Louis, at least two people were killed, and rescue attempts were underway Saturday, Police Chief Mike Fillback said.

Rescues were going slowly because hanging debris was posing dangers to responders, Fillback said.

Dozens of people were able to escape without serious injury, Fillback said.

“It’s devastating to see the amount of damage there and to know there were people inside when that happened,” Fillback told KMOV on Saturday morning. Police did not know how many people were in the building at the time of the collapse, Fillback said, nor how many people still were trapped inside.

In the northeastern Arkansas city of Monette, at least one person was dead after a tornado damaged a nursing home Friday, trapping others inside before being rescued. At least 20 were also injured at the facility, Mayor Bob Blankenship told CNN.

Another person was killed in nearby Leachville, when a woman was “in a Dollar General store when the storm hit and they could not get out,” Mississippi County Sheriff Dale Cook told CNN.

Also in Arkansas, Interstate 555 near the town of Trumann was closed because of overturned vehicles, Arkansas Emergency Management spokesperson LaTresha Woodruff said. State officials had been told the town’s fire department, EMS facility and a nursing home were damaged, Woodruff said.

Those parts of Arkansas — as well as Mayfield, Kentucky — are in a path of more than 200 miles, including slices of Missouri and Tennessee, that might have been produced by one long-track tornado, CNN meteorologists said.

If it was one tornado, that 200-mile path would be the longest traveled of any since 1925.

About 70 miles northeast of Mayfield, Lori Wooten took cover in her daughter’s basement in the small Kentucky community of Dawson Springs as the storm passed Friday night. She emerged to see a 2-foot piece of wood having speared a master bedroom, and debris strewn about outside.

“Gutters are hanging off her … roof. The trampoline — there’s so much stuff out here, it’s hard to know what’s theirs and what’s other people’s,” Wooten, an aunt of CNN political analyst Scott Jennings, told CNN Saturday.

A train derailed near Madisonville, Kentucky, early Saturday morning as weather moved through the area, according to a CSX spokeswoman. There are no reported injuries to the crew.

In northwestern Tennessee north of Memphis, one person was killed in Obion County and two died in Lake County during the storms, the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency said.

In Obion County, multiple structures were damaged in the community of Samburg, according to officials. The town “is pretty well flattened,” Obion County sheriff’s dispatcher Judy Faulkner told CNN.

Along with multiple tornadoes, the storms produced dozens of wind and hail reports as of early Saturday.

Setting off weather alerts Friday from Arkansas to Indiana, the severity of the storms is anticipated to diminish as Saturday continues, with the greatest threat during the early morning hours.

Much of the eastern US will be impacted by rain into Saturday evening. Isolated strong to severe thunderstorms may occur from the Ohio and Tennessee Valleys into the northern Gulf States, according to the Storm Prediction Center. Wind gusts, hail and an isolated tornado remain possible.

Correction: A previous version of this story misspelled the name of Kentucky emergency management Director Michael Dossett.