Mississippi tornado claims 21, further devastates already impoverished community
Kimberly Berry looks at what's left of her home outside Anguilla, Miss., Saturday, March 25, 2023, a day after a massive tornado destroyed the one-story structure where she lived with her two daughters. Berry and her 12-year-old daughter survived in a nearby church during the storm, and her 25-year-old daughter survived in the hard-hit town of Rolling Fork. (AP Photo/Emily Wagster Pettus)
(EEW News Wire) Rescuers combed through rubble on Saturday after a powerful storm tore across Mississippi late on Friday, killing at least 21 people, 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.
The disaster makes life even more difficult in this economically struggling area. Mississippi is one of the poorest states in the U.S., and the majority-Black Delta has long been one of the poorest parts of Mississippi — a place where many people work paycheck to paycheck, often in jobs connected to agriculture.
Jermaine Wells, neighbor of Lonnie and Melissa Pierce, who were killed when the truck landed on their house during a tornado that hit three days earlier, salvages clothes from his home, which was destroyed during the storm, Monday, March 27, 2023, in Rolling Fork, Miss. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)
Two of the counties walloped by the tornado, Sharkey and Humphreys, are among the most sparsely populated in the state, with only a few thousand residents in communities scattered across wide expanses of cotton, corn and soybean fields. Sharkey’s poverty rate is 35%, and Humphreys’ is 33%, compared with about 19% for Mississippi and less than 12% for the entire United States.
People in poverty are vulnerable after disasters not only because they lack financial resources but also because they often don’t have friends or family who can afford to provide long-term shelter, said the Rev. Starsky Wilson, president and CEO of Children’s Defense Fund, a national group that advocates policies to help low-income families.
Robbie Diffey sits on top of the roof of her garage after a tornado destroyed the home she's lived in for 38 years, Monday, March 27, 2023, in Rolling Fork, Miss. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)
“We have to make sure people with power — policymakers — pay attention to and keep their attention on people that are often unseen because they are poor, because they are Black, because they are rural,” Wilson told The Associated Press on Monday.
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.'"
Preliminary assessments show 313 structures in Mississippi were destroyed and more than 1,000 were affected in some way, the Federal Emergency Management Agency told emergency managers Monday.
The tornado destroyed many homes and businesses in Rolling Fork and the nearby town of Silver City, leaving mounds of lumber, bricks and twisted metal. The local housing stock was already tight, and some who lost their homes said they will live with friends or relatives. Mississippi opened more than a half-dozen shelters to temporarily house people displaced by the tornado.