Kentucky’s governor Andy Beshear broke down in tears on Monday as he announced the deaths of at least 64 people from Friday’s deadly tornadoes that swept across multiple midwest and southern states, and warned that the death toll is expected to grow.

The ages of those killed ranged from five months to 86 years, six of them younger than 18, Beshear said at an emotional press conference in Frankfort, the state capital.

He said that 105 Kentuckians were still unaccounted for, and that the eventual number of confirmed deaths might not be known for weeks.

“We believe it’ll certainly be above 70, maybe even 80,” he said, his voice faltering. “I know, like the folks of western Kentucky, I’m not doing so well today. And I’m not sure how many of us are.”

Crews continued to sift the devastated ruins of towns across multiple states on Monday as many grieved and survivors shared harrowing tales of their escape.

Kentucky was the worst hit of eight states where dozens of tornadoes whirled through in massive nighttime storms that leveled whole communities.

Joe Biden declared a major federal disaster in Kentucky, where representatives of a candle factory in the small city of Mayfield reduced to eight the number they said were still unaccounted for. Another eight of 110 shift workers are known to have died after an unseasonal, record-breaking tornado with whirling winds up to 200mph razed the building.

The US president plans to visit Kentucky on Wednesday.

“There were some early reports that as many as 70 could be dead in the factory. One is too many, but we thank God that the number is turning out to be far, far fewer,” said Bob Ferguson, spokesperson for Mayfield Consumer Products that owns the facility.

Beshear said authorities were working to confirm the figures.

As rescuers continued to search the wreckage in Mayfield and across the state, thousands remained without power and water, or homeless.

“The state was hit by at least four tornadoes. One stayed on the ground in Kentucky for at least 200 miles, devastating anything in its path. Thousands of homes are damaged, if not entirely destroyed,” Democrat Beshear said.

“We’re going to keep putting one foot in front of the other [and] push through this. We’re not going anywhere. We’re going to be with you today. We’re going to be with you tomorrow. And we’re going to be there with you to rebuild,” he said.

More than a dozen additional deaths are confirmed in total so far across Arkansas, Illinois, Missouri and Tennessee, including at least six who were killed in a destroyed Amazon warehouse in Edwardsville, Illinois.

“It sounded like a train came through the building. The ceiling tiles came flying down. It was very loud,” warehouse worker David Kosiak, 26, said. “We were in the bathrooms. It was at least two and a half hours in there.”

Outside a wrecked apartment complex in Mayfield, Kentucky, residents spoke of being trapped in the debris for hours, and crying for help as they tried to escape.

Johnny Shreve watched from his window as an office structure across the street disintegrated, then dived onto his kitchen floor as the tornado hit his building and chunks of concrete pelted his body.

“It felt like everything in the world came down on me,” he said.

He lay there for an hour, trying to dig himself out and shouting for his neighbors and his dog. Eventually he broke through into the living room and found the dog trying to scratch toward him from the other side.

He posted on Facebook that they were alive, and added: “Y’all pray for Mayfield.”

“It blew my mind when the sun came up,” Shreve said, when he and others returned to salvage what they could and trade stories of survival.

“I don’t see how this town can recover. I hope we can, but we need a miracle.”

A local pastor, Joel Cauley, described the scene at the candle factory. “It was almost like you were in a twilight zone. You could smell the aroma of candles, and you could hear the cries of people for help,” he said.

“Candle smells and all the sirens is not something I ever expected to experience at the same time.”

The factory was reduced to 15-ft deep wreckage of twisted metal, with corrosive chemicals spilled everywhere and smashed cars on top, where the roof had been, all leaving a difficult and dangerous site at the county’s largest employer.

Wanda Johnson, 90, a resident of an apartment block in the nearby town of Wingo, spoke of her windows “bursting” and how she clung to a door frame in an effort to avoid being blown away. “Dear God, help me, please help me get out of here,” she recalled saying.

Speaking from a shelter beside her son and granddaughter, Johnson said: “They tell me we don’t have a town. Everything’s gone. It’s just wiped away. It just flipped over our city.

“We don’t know where we’re going to go. We don’t know what’s left to go to.”

More than 100 others were in the shelter with Johnson. Aid agencies have set up similar facilities in churches, school gymnasiums and community halls across Kentucky and elsewhere to provide warmth, food and clothing.

Michael Dossett, director of Kentucky’s division of emergency management, said national guard troops and other agencies were bringing in generators. Power restoration in some areas “will be weeks to months,” he said, amid nighttime temperatures below freezing, while other area communities faced a longer recovery time.

“This will go on for years to come,” he said. “This is a massive event, the largest and most devastating in Kentucky’s history.”

Weather experts, meanwhile, were analysing the unprecedented nature and severity of the storms, which spawn most tornadoes in the spring, not December.

More than 80 tornadoes were reported in eight states, prompting Biden to ask the US environmental protection agency to investigate what role the climate crisis might have played.

The Mayfield Consumer Products factory was the third-biggest employer in this corner of western Kentucky, an important economic engine that churned out candles that lined the shelves of malls around the US.

But why its workers kept making scented candles on Friday night as a tornado bore down on the region remains unclear as rescuers continue scouring the factory wreckage for signs of life under what is now 15 feet of twisted metal, poisoned with corrosive chemicals and with wrecked cars on what was the roof.

Kentucky’s governor said on Sunday the ferocity of the storm was so great that there was nowhere safe to hide inside the plant. The 110 workers on the night shift had about 20 minutes warning that a powerful tornado was bearing down.

“It appears most were sheltering in the place they were told to shelter,” the governor, Andy Beshear, said. “I hope that area was as safe as it could be, but this thing got hit directly by the strongest tornado we could have possibly imagined.”

A company spokesperson said Sunday that eight of the 110 workers on the overnight shift Friday are confirmed dead and another eight are missing. For most of Sunday, the authorities had feared that more than 70 of those shift workers were missing and Beshear started talking in firm terms about the death toll being expected to exceed 100 just in Kentucky.

But as of Monday morning, more than 90 have now reportedly been accounted for, indicating that the final death toll in the state will be lower than most had feared hours earlier.

The factory employs many people in and around Mayfield, a city of about 10,000 in Kentucky’s south-west corner and is Graves county’s biggest employer, and even some inmates at the county jail have worked there.

Scented candles made in the plant eventually found their way onto the shelves of prominent US retailers like Bath & Body Works. Shifts were going around the clock to fulfill Christmas demand.

The company’s founder, Mary Propes, in the mid-1990s “literally started this in her garage and it grew to one of the largest candle-makers”, said the company’s spokesman Bob Ferguson.

Bryanna Travis, 19, and Jarred Holmes, 20, stood vigil near the rubble of the Mayfield candle factory at the weekend where they had worked for months, usually for about $14.50 an hour. The engaged couple wasn’t working when the storm hit.

“I worked with these people. I talked to these people. I tried to build connections with these people. And I don’t know if one of my friends is gone,” Holmes said.

Worker Shaniyah McReynolds, who also was lucky enough not to be working at the factory on Friday night, told CNN on Sunday that if the authorities would allow the public close to the dangerous wreckage she would be frantically looking for survivors herself.

“I would be down there digging if they would let me, with my own fingers,” she said.

CEO Troy Propes, the son of Mary Propes, said in the statement: “We’re heartbroken about this, and our immediate efforts are to assist those affected by this terrible disaster. Our company is family-owned and our employees, some who have worked with us for many years, are cherished.”