Trapped Candle Factory Worker Spends 40th Birthday Covered In Rubble

A survivor named Kyanna Parsons-Perez described her harrowing encounter of being trapped in the Kentucky candle factory that collapsed during last night’s devastating tornado strike.

“It was extremely scary,” she recalled. “Everything happened so fast. They had us in the area where you go in case there’s a storm and we were all there and the lights kept flickering and then you could feel the wind and my ears starting popping as if they would if you were on a plane and then we did a little rock, like this way, and then this way” – she shifts from side to side – “and then, BOOM!, everything fell down on us.”

“All you heard was screams,” she continued. “The factory has a lot of Hispanic people there. There’s a lot of Puerta Rican, Mexican, Guatemalan, and then there’s African Americans and Caucasians, you know, it’s a diverse place, but you can hear people screaming and praying in Spanish and just hollering and trying to figure out what to do.”

“I went Live,” she explained. “At first I called 911 but then I went Live because I was trying to stay calm and keep everybody else calm and try to get us as much help as possible so I went Live, [thinking] maybe more people could come to help us and get us out of there.”

Kyanna continued to describe her harrowing experience, saying that after part of the building collapsed over them, she did not think she was going to make it out alive.

“I was so scared but I was trying to stay positive,” she continued. “I think we were down there for at least two hours and I fell in an awkward position and I was right by the air conditioner, I mean, the water fountain. And so, I didn’t know, that behind the water fountain was an air conditioning unit so when the search and rescue person came – and I believe his name was Nate – when he came, I said, ‘Can you please just get this off me?’ because I couldn’t feel my legs. I had been in this weird position for so long that I could not feel my legs.”

The rescue worker explained that they were trying but warned Kyanna that she and her coworkers were trapped by about five feet of debris.

After she was safely evacuated from the building, Kyanna turned around and described her former workplace as a “complete mess.”

“I mean, if you look at the pictures, I literally had to climb up out of the building after it fell on us,” she explained. “I was one of the last people to make it out of the little area that I was in. I think there were about six or seven of us. We couldn’t breathe. People were going in and out of consciousness.”

She explained that one of her supervisors had a wife that was trapped in the rubble. Her supervisor tried to get to his wife, but to get to her, he had to wait until another worker was removed from the rubble first.

“They had some prisoners working there from the Graves County Jail and when I tell you those prisoners were working their tails off to get us out,” she added. “They were helping. And to see inmates – because, you know, they could have used that moment to try to get away – they did not. They were there. They were helping us and once they got one person out, we all kind of just fell out. We were able to get the debris under us to move around and we were able to get out.”

Kyanna says that she suffered bruises on her legs, but with the help of firemen, she was able to free herself from being trapped underneath the water fountain and air conditioning unit.

Although Kyanna is lucky to be alive, she also has another reason to celebrate: today is her 40th birthday.

At least 24 tornadoes struck Kentucky and neighboring states last night and early Saturday morning. The Kentucky governor recently gave a press briefing on the destruction, calling the tornado the worst in the state's history.