Death toll at 26 after powerful tornado tears across Mississippi
Rescuers combed through rubble on Saturday after a powerful storm tore across Mississippi late on Friday, killing at least 25 people there and one person in Alabama as it leveled hundreds of buildings and spawned at least one devastating tornado.
The tornado stayed on the ground for about an hour and cut a path of destruction some 170 miles (274 km) long, according to Nicholas Price, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Jackson, Mississippi.
In Rolling Fork, a town of around 1,900 in western Mississippi that was hit the hardest, homes were reduced to rubble, tree trunks snapped like twigs and cars were tossed aside like toys. The town’s water tower lay twisted on the ground.
Michael Searcy, a storm chaser who saw the tornado approach Rolling Fork, spent hours helping to rescue trapped people.
“As soon as we would go from one vehicle to the next vehicle or from building to building, we could hear screams and we could hear cries for help,” he told Reuters. “And we were just basically in small groups, digging through the rubble, trying to find and extricate people.”
Members of one family narrowly escaped by taking shelter in a bathroom; the rest of the house collapsed around them, and the high winds dropped a van on top of the home, Searcy said.
In Silver City, a rural community of around 300, residents described locking themselves in interior rooms and cowering inside bathtubs as the tornado swept through.
“I thought about God,” said Katherine Ray. “I just started saying, ‘I followed the Ten Commandments, Lord, it’s just me at the house,’ and I just said, ‘Just take care of me.'”
Her prayer was answered, she said; her trailer was damaged but still standing, while many of her neighbors saw their trailers completely destroyed.
Governor Tate Reeves, who visited Silver City on Saturday, declared a state of emergency in the affected areas.
“The scale of the damage and loss is evident everywhere affected today,” he wrote on Twitter. “Homes, businesses … entire communities.”
In Alabama, which was also struck by the same storm system, rescuers pulled a man from the mud when his trailer was overturned, but the man later died from his injuries, according to the Morgan County Sheriff’s Office. That appeared to be the only reported death in that state as of Saturday evening.
