LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Kyanna Parsons-Perez got a phone call on her way to work at Mayfield Consumer Products Friday night. It was a friend telling her to stay home because severe storms were headed her way.

“I need to get this money,” she recalls telling that friend. “I got kids. I got Christmas coming up. I got bills to pay. I need to get to work.”

Parsons-Perez was one of 110 people working at Mayfield Consumer Products when a tornado ripped through the building Friday.

Gov. Andy Beshear said Monday that eight people are believed to have died at the factory and another eight remain missing. He attributed the numbers to representatives of the company. “We pray that it is true,” Beshear said. “We feared much worse and I pray that it is accurate."

“We’re heartbroken about this,” Troy Propes, CEO of Mayfield Consumer Products said in a statement posted online. “Our company is family-owned and our employees, some who have worked with us for many years, are cherished. We’re immediately establishing an emergency fund to assist our employees and their families.” 

Mayfield Consumer Products, the third-largest employer in Graves County, manufactures branded candles and fragrance products for companies such as Bath & Body Works.

In July of 2018, the company announced plans to spend $8.3 million on an expansion, for which the Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority approved $1 million in tax incentives. 

At the time, the family-owned company said it employed 245 people. According to an online job listing, employees work 10- to 12-hour shifts, Monday through Thursday. “Mandatory overtime will be required frequently either by extending your shift or working on Friday,” the listing said. The starting salary is $8-per-hour, just 75 cents above Kentucky’s minimum wage.

According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), Mayfield Consumer Products was fined $16,350 for 12 violations in 2019. Seven of violations were labeled “serious.” 

It was clear all day Friday that bad weather was on its way to Mayfield. At 10:19 a.m. CST Friday, the National Weather Service (NWS) in Paducah tweeted a sober warning. “From late afternoon on through tonight, be ready,” the tweet said. “This could be a significant severe event with a strong tornado or two across our region. Think about what you would do now. Better to err on the safe side.”

At 3:06 p.m., the NWS issued a tornado watch for more than a dozen western Kentucky counties. Three hours later, Parsons-Perez showed up at work. She said she was immediately ushered into the buildings emergency shelter area, which she described as “a T-shaped corridor” of internal hallways. 

After roughly 10 minutes, she and her co-workers were sent back to the factory floor. At 9:10 p.m., the NWS issued its most dire warning yet. “ALERT*** If you live in or near MAYFIELD, you need to be underground if at all possible. Get to shelter NOW!”

At about that same time, Parsons-Perez said she and her co-workers were directed back into the shelter area. Twenty minutes later, the tornado ripped through the building, leaving many of the workers trapped under the rubble. For 10 minutes, Parsons-Perez went live on Facebook and described the horror of the moment. 

“We got hit by a tornado and the building fell on us and we’re trapped,” she said. Co-workers can be heard breathing heavily, calling out for help, and trying to calm one another. At just past midnight, three minutes into her 40th birthday, Parsons-Perez was freed.

A quality assurance worker at the factory, Parsons-Perez said she didn’t question the need to be at work Friday. The Chicago native said she’s used to bad weather and thought little of the storm heading for Mayfield.

She said she believed that her immediate supervisor did everything he should have to protect her and her co-workers. But she wondered if that was true of everyone at the company. 

“Whoever his boss is probably should have said, ‘We probably don’t need to make those candles today. Maybe we should wait.’ But they didn’t,” Parsons-Perez.

According To Congressman Jamie Comer, a Republican who represents much of the area where the storm him, the factory was running at “24/7” to meet holiday demand.

“Ultimately, it is just devastatingly sad that we, as a society, value production of nonessential goods more than human welfare,” said Ariana Levinson, a labor and employment law professor at the University of Louisville. “There is no reason that those who make candles cannot be permitted to work at a reasonable time of day and able to stay home (or at their prison facility where they reside, which is the reality for some of these workers) if serious weather conditions are predicted.”

Several inmates from county jail were among those working to help meet that demand. The program to bring state inmates into the MCP factory was launched over the summer by Graves County Chief Deputy Jailer Donnie Reed. He told The Paducah Sun in July that it was meant to “help inmates before they walk out the door.” The paper reported that a portion of the money they made would go into a savings account for them to use upon their release, and a portion would go back to the county. It was MCP’s idea to start the program, Graves County Judge-Executive Jesse Perry told the paper.

Robyn Smith, a worker's rights lawyer in Louisville, said this is not an unusual arrangement in Kentucky. "The prison population is one of the most easily exploited labor forces," she said. "These are people who don't get to say where they go, what time they come and go, the manner in which they spend any day."

While Parsons-Perez said that she never received any formal training on what to do in the case of a tornado, she was made aware of the building's shelter area when she started work at Mayfield Consumer Products last month.

That’s where she and her co-workers gathered minutes before the tornado hit Friday night. They lined hallways and gathered in bathrooms. 

In an interview on Fox News Sunday, Propes, the company’s CEO said, “You would have thought this was one of the safest places to be.”

On a webpage detailing tornado preparedness guidelines, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration says “underground area, such as a basement or storm cellar, provides the best protection from a tornado.” If that’s not available, people should “seek a small interior room or hallway on the lowest floor possible.”

But Paul Gabehart, owner of Kentucky Storm Shelters, said it’s clear that wasn’t enough. “If you don't have a structure that has been rated for EF-5, then really you got a minimal amount of protection,” said Gabehart, who has installed underground and steel safe rooms for several major manufacturers in Kentucky.

Many businesses don’t prioritize these structures, he said, until it’s too late. “They’ve got other things to address,” he said. “None of this is pressing at any given time until something like this comes along.”