Rolling Fork, Mississippi – Rescuers raced Saturday to search for survivors and help hundreds of people left homeless after a powerful tornado ripped a devastating path through Mississippi, killing at least 25 people, injuring dozens, leveling entire blocks and destroying homes in at least one Mississippi Delta city as it blazed a path of destruction for more than an hour. One person died in Alabama.
Severe weather devastated a swath of the city of Rolling Fork, reducing homes to piles of rubble, flipping cars, and toppling the city’s water tower. Residents took refuge in bathtubs and hallways during the storm Friday night, then stormed into a John Deere store that they turned into a sorting center for the injured.
The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency announced in a tweet Saturday afternoon that the death toll had risen from 23 to 25. Four people previously reported missing were found, but dozens were also injured. A man also died in Morgan County, Alabama, the Sheriff’s Department said in a tweet.
“There’s nothing left,” said Wonder Bolden, holding her granddaughter, Journey, as she stood outside the remains of her mother’s now-razed mobile home in Rolling Fork. “There is only the breeze that runs, passes, simply nothing.”
Throughout Saturday, she and others walked around in a daze and shock as they hacked their way through rubble and fallen trees with chainsaws looking for survivors. Power lines were strapped under decades-old oak trees, their roots torn out of the ground.
Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves issued a state of emergency and vowed to help rebuild as he headed to survey the damage in an area dotted with wide expanses of cotton, corn and soybean fields and catfish ponds. President Joe Biden also pledged federal aid, describing the damage as “heartbreaking.”
The devastation in the Rolling Fork was so extensive that several storm chasers – who track severe weather and often live-stream dramatic funnel clouds – pleaded for search and rescue help.
‘Like a bomb’
But it didn’t help that the community medical center on the city’s west side sustained damage, forcing patients to be relocated.
Sheddrick Bell, his partner and their two daughters crouched in a closet in their Rolling Fork home for 15 minutes as the tornado moved. His daughters would not stop crying. She could hear his partner praying out loud next to her.
“I was thinking, ‘If I can still open my eyes and move, I’m fine,’” he said.
Rodney Porter, who lives about 20 miles (32 kilometers) south of the city and is with the local fire department, said he did not know how anyone survived while delivering water and fuel to families there.
“It’s like a bomb went off,” he said, describing houses stacked on top of houses. Crews even cut gas lines to the city to keep residents and first responders safe.
The warning issued by the National Weather Service when the weather turned dangerous did not mince words: “To protect your life, TAKE COVER NOW!”
Preliminary information based on estimates from storm reports and radar data indicates it was on the ground for more than an hour and traversed at least 170 miles (274 kilometers), said Lance Perrilloux, a meteorologist with the weather service’s office in Jackson, Mississippi. .
“That’s rare, very, very rare,” he said, attributing the long drive to widespread atmospheric instability.
