2:44 PM
The air in Mayfield didn't feel right. Luis "Chili" Pardo didn't like it. He didn't like the way his skin felt inside the Soccer Factory, the indoor field he opened a year before.
A couple of parents were talking to him. The rest of the games should be canceled. They said the weather forecasters were telling them that a storm was on the way. Other parents were not upset. In Western Kentucky, they get at least a dozen tornado warnings a year.
Chili was torn. It would be difficult to replace the last two games. Even though he'd lived in this town for 20 years, he was worried that parents would think he was an alarmist. He could lose money. Not a lot. Enough for him to think.
The children were playing on the turf field and it was hot and wet. It was 72 degrees on Dec. 10, which is usually in the 30s or 40s. He said it felt like waiting for a storm in Miami. "It was very hot."
Luis "Fish" Ajanel looked at his phone. Chili canceled his game. He thought that he had to be kidding. Those are some babies. Why is everyone so worried?
Gage Lynch was driving to the game when Fish text him. That stinks. Gage said to himself that he really wanted to play.
Chili and his wife debated if they should stay in the building to clean the bathroom and tidy up the building after parents and children left. He didn't like it. He didn't like how the air felt. He told his family to get in the car. They grabbed a quick dinner and watched soccer on the internet. Emergency warnings blared from their phones.
The family moved chairs into the bathroom and opened the weather app for the television station. The messages from the meteorologists became more urgent as they pointed to the distinctive pattern of a massive tornado southwest of Mayfield. It had destroyed so many buildings as it moved over the Mississippi River, first into Tennessee and now into Kentucky, and the radar showed a debris signature more than a mile wide, and it was headed directly toward Mayfield.
Gage said that they were told that it was too late to go to the basement. Don't try to leave. Find the cover. Find the cover! "If you can hear us, find cover!"
Fish was playing games on his phone at his mother's house when he heard the emergency warnings. "I was like, 'Everyone's talking about this tornado and stuff,' and I'm like, 'Y'all just gotta be laid back,'" he said. He closed his eyes and threw his phone down.
A piercing sound is coming from Chili's phone. The dog jumped on the children in the bathroom. They heard a loud noise. Everything was dark.
Fish heard his mother screaming.
The photographer took a photo on the flight from Chicago to Alabama. The National Weather Service says the storm reached 30,000 feet. It missed the city by the left of the supercell.
The "Quad-State Tornado," which struck Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee and Kentucky two weeks ago, left 90 people dead and dozens injured. The names are added to the list as people die from their injuries. There are pictures on a chain-link fence in front of the destroyed courthouse in Mayfield, with the faces of tiny infants, elementary school children and at least one man who was in his 90s. It took more than a week for the bodies of three hunters, including a 12-year-old boy, to be found in the ruins of a motel. Seven people from the Brown family died when their house was blown off its foundation in Bowling Green, which is more than 130 miles to the northeast.
Nine people died and more were injured in the candle factory. There's a ferocious discussion in Mayfield and across the nation following reports that the candle factory didn't let employees go home to take shelter as the storm approached. One national headline said, "Tornado deaths in Kentucky reveal prioritization of profit over workers." The company said its managers acted heroically. A lawsuit has been filed.
The stories of people who made life or death decisions are emerging from the chaos. There are stories of rescue and recovery, of searching and trying to send money and supplies, for those who survived. There are former football and baseball players, a high school football powerhouse, and one of the best basketball players this town has ever seen.
Some moved away to pursue their dreams, while others stayed to build them here. Two weeks after the storm, they're all picking the shards of their dreams out of the rubble, finding each other, and helping friends and neighbors.
There are photos of victims on a fence near the damaged courthouse. Robert Daniel was a football player at the high school and died in the candle factory.
Luis "CHILI" PARDO came to the area 20 years ago to play soccer. He drove past the school twice before calling his coach to find the campus because there was no field or stadium. There are three small buildings. He was worried he had made a mistake.
When his family lived in Germany for a year, he trained with the Hamburg FC academy at the age of 10. He started with one of the country's premier academies at the age of 17. He moved to the United States on a travel visa to be closer to his mother after she moved to Miami to support the family. Chili didn't have a work visa so he wasn't able to play with MLS and USL teams. He was one of a group of international students who were recruited for the school's first soccer team. The college went bankrupt.
He arrived as Hispanic families were moving to the area, looking for work on tobacco farms and in the nearby poultry industry. That's how Luis Fabian ended up here. His family worked in the chicken factory.
"Chili was my coach when I was in high school," he said. He was in college. I watched him play. He was a great player.
Chili was asked why he stayed in Mayfield after four years in college. It was easy for Chili. He met his wife, who was an American citizen. Chili's small auto detailing business was expanded by the couple before they added a used car dealership, a mechanic shop and a restaurant.
Chili said that he felt like he was able to do something in this town. You can have things if you work hard. You can be a person.
He wanted to be able to coach soccer at the field in Mayfield. Chili used some of their savings to buy an abandoned lot. The property became an impromptu landfill after an old clothing factory burned down. Chili and his wife pulled rocks, bricks and bottles from the ground. He graded the soil into a field. He welded the goals himself after installing the irrigation system.
Fish remembers walking past Chili and admiring what he was doing. Fish said that most Hispanics want to make something out of themselves. He had a car dealership and a detail shop when I was 13 years old. I want to work for myself when I'm older.
Chili was training young players. Chili wanted his teams to have year-round training, like he did in the academy system. He got out there again when the banks wouldn't lend him money to buy a building. He worked on steel beams. He was able to pour concrete. He made wooden boxes that became soccer goals. He bartered a used car for construction supplies.
Fish said that he built it from scratch.
The Soccer Factory opened. Chili had 68 youth teams scheduled to play within a few weeks. The players from Tennessee and Illinois traveled to train with him. Fish was sent to refine his skills.
It was a big deal for the Hispanic community. Hispanics now make up 15% of the population. A lot of Hispanics can't afford to drive somewhere else or pay to play a club. It was a huge impact when he built it.
Fish and Gage were charged $5 by Chili to practice. Gage said that it wasn't worth it for him as far as the monetary side of things, but that he cared for them and wanted them to have a safe place to enjoy their game. A lot of Hispanic families would come and watch because they love the game of soccer.
"He wasn't making a lot of money on this facility but he was making a lot of progress," said Patrick Adamson, president of the regional soccer club Kentucky Elite. He has a son who plays for Chili. He was bringing people together. He took a dead spot in downtown and made it alive.
It took two years and $250,000 in cash and in-kind deals to build. Chili said he couldn't afford to take out a policy of at least $580,000, or what it would cost to build a replacement, because he couldn't afford it. He said he could upgrade after his first season. He said the insurance company representative told him that she would try to find another underwriter and that she would call him back.
He was waiting for the call when the tornado hit.
Chili's businesses, including his auto detailing business, were destroyed by the tornado.
When he was a teenager, Hal "TRIPP" Gibbons III spent his summer painting the courthouse square. He said that he was on three levels of scaffolding, a roller and a bunch of paint because his grandfather owned most of the court square.
Tripp didn't want to be a painter or manage rental properties, so he quit. He's the first to tell you that his grandfather used the rental income to lend Tripp the money for umpire school. Tripp was behind the plate for the first game of the NLCS between the Atlanta Braves and Los Angeles Dodgers in 2021.
Tripp was given knowledge of the town's geography by the family business. He knew what every building looked like.
I had traveled down these streets many times. Hundreds of thousands of times. He said that he got lost. The street signs are no longer there. A lot of the buildings in the area were destroyed, like the courthouse, the fire department, and the police department. You don't know where you are without those buildings.
He said it took him a minute to realize which building was his father's office. I couldn't find it for a while. I began to recognize items in the rubble. There are a lot of baseball items from my time in the minor league and major league.
Tripp flew in to help dig the town out of the rubble. One of his dad's tenants was buried under the rubble of her house. She crawled out of a hole on her hands and knees. One man took shelter in his closet, only to discover the rest of his house had vanished. The entire city block of downtown businesses that sat kitty-corner from the courthouse was lost in the fire.
Juxtapose.
Satellite images of the downtown area in Kentucky were taken on January 28, 2017, and December 11, 2021.
The tornado ripped through the center of town, between the region's two high schools. The water tower is no longer standing on the ground. The school lost all of its buses. The corrugated metal roofing on the downtown buildings is razor-sharp. The metal is everywhere, twisted around split telephone poles, broken buildings and the skeletons of trees hanging off their carcasses like foil.
The damage you can't see is the worst of tornadoes. There is nothing left except a concrete slab, which is silent testament to the power of this vortex. The storm stretched more than 30,000 feet into the air, as high as the highest commercial airliners. People have found check ledgers and prom pictures of people in this area.
Gage put his equipment into a pickup as soon as he saw the pictures on social media, after the tornado missed his house. He had to walk as he neared downtown because there was so much debris across the roads. He became confused and gingerly stepped over sharp objects.
He saw a green object reflecting back at him when he turned the corner. It took a while to realize it was artificial turf. Gage saw steps leading to a concrete slab. There was no door. Absolutely nothing.
Gage said there wasn't a toilet or anything left standing. There was nothing you could have hid.
It hit him in that moment. He was standing in the area where he was supposed to play.
The Soccer Factory was where he found it.
If Chili had not canceled the games, Gage Lynch would have been playing at the Soccer Factory.
Chris was getting ready to play Ohio State after the tornado. The center for the University of Wisconsin men's basketball team had been texting all morning. His friends back home reassured him that his parents' house was still standing and no one had been killed.
But he wanted to do something. He needed to do something. He said that his thoughts were racing before the game. I was trying to play with a clear mind. It's hard to do.
He hit on a solution as he walked toward the bus. He asked if NCAA rules would allow him to raise money. Vogt researched how to set up a GoFundMe account. He said that the plane was ready to go when it landed in Madison.
He wanted to raise $10,000. His campaign has raised more than $180,000. His is the most well-known of the many accounts that collect funds to help tornado survivors.
Joe Morris is the athletic director and football coach at the high school. He said that people are giving their hard-earned money. People keep asking, 'What can we give?' What can we do?
"I've had almost every football coach in the state reach out to me," Morris said. The man nodded. All the high school soccer coaches in Kentucky have asked him how they can help.
Murray State, Kentucky and Louisville basketball teams have raised money. Beachwood High School, which beat Mayfield in the football playoffs this year, sent a truck of donations. They're sending five truckloads of stuff and a nice check. They're a class of guys.
Kentucky National Guard soldiers have been bringing boxes to the school's gym, where teachers and other school staff sort them into sections. The principal's wife put clothing in neat piles on the basketball bleachers. Her daughter put the batteries on the table. The tornado victims needed help finding what they needed. One of Morris's former players drove in from Virginia to load water and supplies into vehicles for people who no longer have a car.
The two coaches checked on their students after the tornado. They know of at least two football players who lost their homes. A soccer player lost his house, while another lost his roof. Some students and their families have come to the gym to get supplies.
No one has seen Fish.
A box of donations is being put into a cart by a Wisconsin center at his alma mater. Vogt has raised more than $180,000 for his hometown.
The rain is relentless. It pours and pours. It pours down the staircase in the old building. The windows exploded when it blew through the holes. This house has been searched and it is now condemned.
Fish has lived in this house with nine other relatives. It is his aunt's house. Fish and Little Fish spend a lot of their time here. It is a block away from Chili's soccer fields.
Fish and his brother got their nickname from a friend of theirs, who is also named Luis, along with two other kids on their high school team. The name Fish was given to the players by the coach to prevent them from getting confused on the field.
Fish's family moved to Guatemala. They work on farms. He said they are doing very hard labor jobs. "They go wherever there's opportunities to make money because we can't work under the government because they'll deport us."
Fish said that they are afraid to go to places like the Red Cross to ask for help. "We fear that the government might use it against us if we reach out."
He said his aunt is Hispanic. Not a single home has survived within the three-block area. Many of their neighbors are afraid to ask for help.
He said that the church has been helpful. They gave us a generator and chainsaw.
His aunt began to cry as the family walked through the remains of her kitchen.
Fish said that she said that she put so much hard work into this and now all of her years of work is gone. She said that her house used to be beautiful. It is ugly now.
A close relative was pulled from the candle factory rubble, her lower body injured.
Fish wanted to go to the University of Louisville to get an accounting degree. He has to decide what it will take to rebuild his aunt's home and repair his father's house, which were both damaged by the tornado. Fish is one of the few in his family who is American and speaks English well. He wonders if he should go to FEMA for his family. "If I go to FEMA and get a $10,000 check, will that ruin my chance for college and student loans?" he asked.
The kid who ignored the tornado warnings and fell asleep during the worst storm in the state's history has vanished, replaced by a young man carrying the heavy weight of taking care of his frightened family.
He asked where you were going to find $210,000. It doesn't come to people like us.
Luis "Fish" Anjanel, in gray, and his aunt, in maroon, are walking through what's left of her home.
George Wilson played in the National Football League for 10 years, mostly for the Buffalo Bills. The strong safety made 525 tackles and scored a few touchdown. He knows how to win. He knows what it's like to lose. Especially to the high school.
He said that one of his biggest regrets was not being able to beat Mayfield. When I was in high school, we went 1-2.
A huge chortling sound comes out almost like a shout when Bryan Hall laughed. When I was in high school, we went 3-1.
The men played for a high school north of here. One of the longest high school rivalries in the nation is between the school and the Mayfield.
More often than not, Mayfield is victorious. According to Morris, it's fourth in the nation for all-time wins. The school has won 12 state titles. Morris is responsible for six of the titles. Jack can claim four more.
Wilson said that it was something that former opponents always reminded them of. They dominated us. They still say, "Hey, I beat you in high school," even though we both played pro.
Hall nearly doubled over with his addictive laughter when Wilson said there was a history of vandalizing the property at both schools. "We are definitely rivals on the football field."
Wilson stopped laughing.
He said that they were putting that aside. There's no bad blood. There is a level of respect and love on both sides of the rivalry. We came to help this community.
Robert Daniel was a football player for Morris. Daniel, a deputy jailer, used his body to protect inmates he was guarding as part of a work release program. The inmates all survived.
The Holt brothers were in the candle factory. Hall said that Bobby was in a medically induced coma and both brothers were flown to Nashville.
Hall was in Baltimore when she saw what happened. I was like, 'Hey George.' Hey dog, we need to help our community.
Hall used the connections he made through the NFL in Baltimore to raise money to buy Christmas toys. Wilson gathered essential supplies in Paducah. Wilson's SAFETY Foundation was used to recruit volunteers to distribute it all.
Bryan Hall, a former member of the Tilghman High School football team, and other former players unloaded their Christmas toys for tornado survivors in Maryland.
Two former football players unloaded boxes and semis onto the parking lot of a high school as Morris looked on with gratitude. Hall and a half-dozen of his former teammates unloaded the toys while Wilson moved the large amount of boxes. Their former coaches and teachers greeted a group of tornado survivors stretching more than 200 people deep.
Fish's family stood at the front of the line.
Wilson said that they put the word out to the Hispanic churches to make them feel comfortable. This is a safe zone. Everyone, you are safe. It's safe to come out of the shadows and not have to worry.
Fish's aunt finally asked after a week after the tornado, and received a drill they needed. His mother requested toilet paper and paper towels. His brother and cousins saw Hall's mountain of toys and were excited. Little Fish was carrying a box with a Christmas tree inside.
Everyone in the family was smiling. He was looking for something that wasn't there. Fish said he was trying to find the gifts that his youngest cousins, the ones too little to understand what has happened, really want.
Hall told Fish to follow him. He jumped over a row of toys, even sprinting through piles of donations. The Super Bowl champion crouched down, one hand on the ground, in a pose similar to what he learned on the football field, to dig through a box and find toys Fish had hoped to find.
"It's not every day you see someone give out $100,000 in gifts for people," Fish said. You don't see that.
The teenager explained how important this is to his family. He told Wilson that people have said they need an ID or a social security number. People who don't speak English, who have lost everything, try to get stuff, but they can't.
Wilson promised to hold more of the "pop-up" distributions. He told Fish that this is a safe area. There's nothing to worry about. You can let your friends, your church members, and your neighbors know that you need help. If you're in need, that's all we care about.
Fish was pulled in for a hug by Wilson. You are a great example. Our young men should be like that. Thank you for being a leader in this difficult time.
Fish emerged from the hug overcome with emotion and had kept a quiet face.
"We need more people like him," he said as George helped another family. This world would be a better place if we had more people like him.
Residents look for essentials at a distribution center.
Fish knows that it could have been worse.
He said he should have died.
He knows that if they had been at the Soccer Factory that night, they would have ignored the tornado warnings and kept playing.
The game was supposed to start at 9. The tornado hit after that. We would have been on the field playing soccer, and the game would have been going on. We wouldn't have seen it coming.
He was supposed to be there with his daughter.
He said he could have died. Chili canceled the games because there was going to be a lot of people injured or killed.
He can't finish the thought.
What if Chile hadn't canceled? "I said that." A lot of stuff goes through your head. I kissed my wife. I kiss my child. I'm very thankful.
He paused. He said that he was his God. "We are very blessed."
This community is very religious. Gage said the hot, wet air that night sent a message to Chili. He said that the Lord told Chili the game didn't need to go on. There are a lot of people that have died, but there are a lot of people that could have died.
There could have been a big loss of life at the factory. It was a big-time loss of life. I think God told Chili not to do this. Don't do it.
It's a miracle. It is a miracle.
It feels like the Book of Job to the soccer dad. He's not sure why Chili is being tested.
Chili's detailing shop has become a nightmare. Dozens of vehicles have been damaged. A telephone pole fell on the hull of another vehicle. The cars have been impaled by wooden beams and steel trusses.
"It's just like all the cars are piled on top of each other," he said of Chili's lot. It's amazing to see.
Little Fish and his cousin lost their home in the tornado, so they chose Christmas toys from the pile donated by Bryan Hall.
It will take a lot of machinery to unwrap the debris and haul away the cars. He wants to keep the bulldozers and cranes away from the grass field. The irrigation system he worked so hard to install is the only thing that hasn't been destroyed by the tornado. Chili wants to use the field for a league. He wants his players to keep training. To give them something to look forward to.
He wants to give his son a way to escape from what he knows will be years of recovery.
Chili needs soccer goals. They've started a campaign to raise money for the Soccer Factory, and hope an MLS team will donate equipment.
He said that soccer helps soccer.
The soccer factory families are not waiting for help. They put on their gloves and went to work. The adults lifted the heavy stuff like corrugated roofing while the kids picked out nails and glass from the grass. The people showed up to clear the field.
Chili found one of his soccer balls a few hours after the clean up.
Chili said that the ball looked good. It's still inflated. My 6-year-old told my little one to throw the ball. I threw it to him.
The kids started to play on the barren concrete slab where the Soccer Factory used to be.
Children who came to help clear debris from Chili's soccer fields play a pickup game on the site of the Soccer Factory.
