When Capt. Joseph P. Siedel of the Cuba Community Fire Department in Mayfield, KY, reported for duty on Dec. 10, 2021, he knew it was going to be a rough night, but no one could have guessed how rough.
The National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center (SPC) had been tracking an intense upper-level trough as it progressed across the High Plains for a couple of days. At 3 p.m., the SPC issued a tornado watch for several nearby states.
At approximately 6 p.m., Graves County Emergency Manager Tracy Warner put all the volunteer fire departments on standby in preparation for a predicted Particularly Dangerous Situation (PDS) warning from the SPC.
“We were told to expect two cells to pass through Graves County, one around 9 p.m. and another in the 1 a.m.–2 a.m. timeframe,” Siedel recalls. “We’ve had several tornados in the past and the general feeling with the people I talked with was this was just another stormy night. I figured it would be a few trees down and some power outages...maybe some flooding. My wife, Vickie, on the other hand, was extremely concerned and began preparing for a devastating event.”
A tornado touched down in Woodland Mills, TN, at 8:49 p.m. and was headed northeast. As it crossed the border into Kentucky, the storm intensified, reaching EF2 strength. The eye of the storm was expected to pass through a rural area to the south of Graves County, so Warner was in touch with Cuba Fire Chief Mitchell Dick making plans for search and rescue efforts and road-clearing operations. Then, KFVS12 in Cape Girardeau, MO, reported that the storm was turning towards Mayfield.
Eye of the storm
Just before the storm entered into western Kentucky, it shifted toward the town of Mayfield, approximately 10 miles north of the Cuba Fire Department and into the city limits. The now EF4 tornado tore through the center of town causing widespread, catastrophic damage. In a matter of minutes, the courthouse, jail, sheriff’s office, city hall, city police department, main station of the city fire department/EMS were all structurally compromised. The Graves County Courthouse had much of its roof torn off and its clock tower collapsed. Three large churches were virtually leveled. The candle factory, that employed 550 workers, was flattened.
“I received a call from my place of employment, the Graves County Jail, stating the jail had taken a direct hit from the tornado, as did the candle factory where seven of our inmates and fellow Deputy Jailer Robert Daniel were located on a work-release program,” Siedel says.
The bell tower of the courthouse had collapsed onto the jail causing major structural damage. At this point, Siedel asked Chief Dick and Assistant Chief Chris Travis to assist with the evacuation of the 93 inmates.
“Chief Dick and Mayfield Police Officer Lt. Vaughn were able to clear the roads and obtain several school buses allowing us to safely evacuate the Graves County Jail,” Siedel says.
“We searched streets and helped connect separated family members. We hauled equipment and supplies. We just found what needed to be done and worked together to make it happen,” Siedel recalls. “The city and county schools were indispensable. Not only did they provide buses for the jail evacuation, but our Incident Command used buses with medically trained personnel to transport non-critical patients to hospitals, transport non-wounded to shelters and Mayfield High School opened their gym for triage that night and later to distribute much needed essential supplies to families.”
Siedel connected with one of the many volunteer firefighters who happened to be a store manager of the local Dollar General store.
“He, after receiving permission, let me enter the store so we could grab a few supplies, like flashlights, spray paint and a phone charger. These supplies were critical in those still dark and stormy conditions in which we found ourselves searching and marking buildings. We had learned in our Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) training how to assess a structure and mark a building to identify that state of the search. We felt this was a big advantage. Many volunteers had self-deployed, and we hoped this prevented unnecessary loss of time in repeating work already accomplished.”
Door to door
Siedel and several members of the Cuba Department entered a highly populated residential area going door to door looking for people who needed help. A deputy jailer approached the group and stated that there were voices coming from a home that no longer had a roof and was missing walls.
“Assistant Chief Travis and I entered the home. As I went upstairs, Travis went down to the basement, where he found seven people who had taken shelter and needed help getting to a safe location. Two of the individuals asked if we could go check on their mother’s home down the road. Travis stayed with the seven as firefighter Brandon Wedel and I went to look for the mother. The massive amount of damage made it impossible to locate house numbers or identifying markers, so searching was slow and extremely difficult in the darkness.
“As we walked down the road through the rubble, we noticed a man sitting on his front porch in a rocking chair with major damage all around his home. When I asked if he needed assistance, he politely smiled, thanked us for our help, and showed us his really nice shotgun. He stated rather nonchalantly, ‘I've got all the help I need, but thank you for checking on me.’
“We headed to the next street over where Wedel had a family member. We arrived at her home and entered through the window because that was the only available way to get inside the partial structure. He noticed her sleeping on the couch. There had been major damage to the dwelling including a tree on the roof. We took her and her animals safely out of the home and escorted her to the local city fire department where she was able to get a ride to the triage area established at Mayfield High School.”
Candles in the wind
Siedel had received a call during the night that fellow Deputy Jailer Daniel’s body had been recovered at the scene. Daniel died making the ultimate sacrifice. Reports say that he guided the inmates and about 100 employees ahead of him into the building’s shelter, but the roof collapsed before he could get in, trapping Daniel and one of the inmates. Rescuers say that Daniel’s solid frame may have prevented the inmate from being crushed to death.
When daybreak arrived, Siedel and crew headed over to the candle factory. Most individuals had been rescued or identified at that point, so this became mostly a recovery mission.
“As volunteers, we were given a section to search in a grid pattern,” he explains. “Equipment was used to move debris with periodic breaks taken for complete silence to listen for victims.”
“I could tell where I was based on machinery and landmarks,” he says. “The hardest thing was crawling through the rubble listening to the wind blow against the metal tin unable to decipher the difference between a call for help or just wind in the air.”
All the while, thinking about his lost friend and praying that all of the inmates had survived.
While all seven inmates were rescued, sadly, 77 Kentuckians died in the tornado, including nine at the candle factory.
