Survivors of Kentucky candle factory collapse suing company: report

Three employees at the candle factory in Kentucky that was destroyed by tornadoes this past weekend will be suing the company, The Courier Journal reported.

“We have identified six causes of action before, during and after the tornado at the Mayfield Consumer Products Plant,” D.C.-based attorney Amos Jones told the newspaper. “We will be filing formally very soon.”

Jones did not specify what the causes of action are.

At least eight of the 110 employees at the factory have been confirmed dead, with the company saying it is still verifying how many surviving employees have been accounted for.

Since the factory’s collapse, multiple workers have come forward saying they were not permitted to leave the factory even as weather conditions worsened and tornado sirens blared. Managers reportedly threatened to fire them if they went home.

“People had questioned if they could leave or go home,” factory employee McKayla Emery told NBC News.

Another employee at the factory, Haley Conder, said employees were initially not permitted to leave after the first siren due to safety concerns and they instead congregated in bathrooms and hallways. After the threat had appeared to clear, employees were then sent back to work, according to Conder.

Mayfield Consumer Products spokesperson Bob Ferguson has denied these claims.

“It’s absolutely untrue,” Ferguson said. “We’ve had a policy in place since Covid began. Employees can leave any time they want to leave and they can come back the next day.”

When asked about the potential lawsuit on Wednesday by The Courier Journal, Ferguson said, “We understand we live in a very litigious world and are not surprised that profit-seeking litigators are already poring over this area.”

The Hill has reached out to Jones and Mayfield Consumer Products for comment.

Earlier this week, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) announced it was launching a probe into another facility that was affected by the tornadoes in Illinois. Six people are confirmed to have died at the Amazon facility in Edwardsville, Ill.

Amazon has asserted that the facility had little time to prepare for the tornado and that the onsite team moved “immediately” upon learning of the threat to ensure that workers went to designated shelter in place locations.

— Editor’s note: This story was updated on Dec. 16 to correct the name of the city where OSHA launched a probe.