MAYFIELD, Ky. - Rescuers were forced to crawl over the dead to get to the living at a Kentucky candle factory walloped by a tornado, part of an unusual cluster that killed dozens in the Midwest and South and flattened whole towns.

By the time churchgoers gathered Sunday morning to pray for the lost, more than 24 hours had elapsed since anyone had been found alive. Instead, crews recovered pieces of peoples' lives — a backpack, a pair of shoes and a cellphone with 27 missed messages were among the items. Still, a definitive death toll remained elusive, though it was expected to be lower than initially feared.

Kentucky was the worst-hit by far in a swarm of twisters across several states, remarkable because they came at a time of year when cold weather normally limits tornadoes. They left at least eight people dead at the state's Mayfield Consumer Products candle factory and another 12 were reported killed in and around Bowling Green. At least another 14 people died in Illinois, Tennessee, Arkansas and Missouri.

Authorities are still trying to determine the total number of dead amid confusion over how many were able to escape the factory and the difficulties of searching other hard-hit areas. The twisters made door-to-door searches impossible in some places. "There are no doors," said Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear.

"We're going to have over 1,000 homes that are gone, just gone," he said.

Beshear said Saturday that only 40 of the 110 people working in the candle factory at the time were rescued, and that "it'll be a miracle if anybody else is found alive in it." But on Sunday, the company said that while eight were confirmed dead and eight remained missing, more than 90 others had been located.

"Many of the employees were gathered in the tornado shelter and after the storm was over they left the plant and went to their homes," said Bob Ferguson, a spokesman for the company. "With the power out and no landline they were hard to reach initially. We're hoping to find more of those eight unaccounted as we try their home residences."

Night-shift workers were in the middle of the holiday rush, cranking out candles, when the word went out to seek shelter.

For Autumn Kirks, that meant tossing aside wax and fragrance buckets to make an improvised safe place. She glanced away from her boyfriend, Lannis Ward, who was about 10 feet away at the time.

Suddenly, she saw sky and lightning where a wall had been, and Ward had vanished.

"I remember taking my eyes off of him for a second, and then he was gone," Kirks said.

Later in the day, she got the terrible news — that Ward had been killed in the storm.

"It was indescribable," Pastor Joel Cauley said of the disaster scene. "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. Candle smells and all the sirens is not something I ever expected to experience at the same time."

Four twisters hit Kentucky in all, including one with an extraordinarily long path of about 200 miles (322 kilometers), authorities said. Beshear had said Sunday morning that the state's toll could exceed 100. But after state officials heard the candle company's update, he said that afternoon it might be as low as 50.