Search and recovery crews yesterday resumed the daunting task of digging through the debris of flattened and battered homes, commercial buildings, and municipal offices after hundreds of people were displaced by a deadly tornado that ripped through the Mississippi Delta, one of the poorest regions of the US.
At least 25 people were killed and dozens injured as the massive storm ripped through several towns on its hour-long path on Friday night. Across the state border in Alabama, one man was killed after his trailer home flipped several times.
The twister flattened entire blocks, obliterated houses, ripped a steeple off a church and toppled a municipal water tower. Even with recovery just starting, the US National Weather Service warned of a risk of more severe weather yesterday — including high winds, large hail and possible tornadoes — in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
Photo: AFP
Based on preliminary data, the storm was rated category 4 on the Enhanced Fujita (EF) scale, the weather service office in Jackson, Mississippi, wrote on Twitter late on Saturday.
An EF-4 tornado has top wind gusts of 265kph to 320kph, it said, adding that it was still gathering information on the tornado.
US President Joe Biden promised federal help to Mississippi, and US Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Deanne Criswell was yesterday scheduled to visit the area to evaluate the destruction.
The tornado devastated a swath of Rolling Fork, a town of 2,000 people, reducing homes to piles of rubble, flipping vehicles on their sides and toppling the town’s water tower.
Other parts of the Deep South were digging out from damage caused by other suspected twisters. One man died in Morgan County, Alabama, the local sheriff’s department wrote on Twitter.
“How anybody survived is unknown by me,” said Rodney Porter, who lives 32km south of Rolling Fork.
When the storm hit, he immediately drove there to assist in any way he could.
Porter said he arrived to find “total devastation,” adding that he smelled natural gas and heard people screaming for help in the dark.
“Houses are gone, houses stacked on top of houses with vehicles on top of that,” he said.
Annette Body drove to the hard-hit town of Silver City from nearby Belozi to survey the damage.
She said she was feeling “blessed” because her own home was not destroyed, but other people she knows lost everything.
“Cried last night, cried this morning,” she said, looking around at flattened homes. “They said you need to take cover, but it happened so fast a lot of people didn’t even get a chance to take cover.”
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