Tornado causes widespread destruction in Mississippi
As severe weather with golf ball-sized hail rolled across many southern states on Friday night, a powerful tornado tore through a rural part of the Mississippi Delta, inflicting injuries, widespread damage, and downing power lines.
About sixty miles (ninety-six km) northeast of Jackson, Mississippi, a tornado was verified to have caused damage by the National Weather Service. Tornado damage reports came in from outlying communities like Silver City and Rolling Fork as it swept through Tchula and Winona late into the night.
According to The Associated Press’s interview with Cornel Knight, the family man and his wife and his three-year-old daughter were visiting relatives in Rolling Fork when the twister hit. As he put it, “you could see the direction from every transformer that blew,” even though the night was pitch black.
It was “eerily quiet,” he added, when that occurred. Knight stated that he waited until the storm was less than a mile distant while watching from a doorway. Then he ordered everyone inside the home to seek shelter in an inside corridor. He was at a relative’s house when a tornado hit, across a large corn field. Multiple individuals were trapped inside as a wall gave way in that house. Knight told AP that he could see the lights of rescue cars near the half fallen home as he spoke to them over the phone.
Eldridge Walker, mayor of Rolling Fork, told WLBT-TV that he was trapped in his damaged home for several hours after the tornado struck because the electricity lines had been knocked down. He said that rescue workers were making efforts to transport injured persons to medical facilities. He was unaware of how many individuals had been harmed at the time.
Fred Miller, the former mayor of Rolling Fork, told the TV station that a tornado shattered the back windows of his home.
Reed Timmer, a storm chaser, tweeted that he was taking wounded people of Rolling Fork to a hospital in Vicksburg and that the hamlet urgently needed medical assistance.
According to WAPT, the west side of Rolling Fork, including the Sharkey-Issaquena Community Hospital, sustained damage.
Gas leaks and persons trapped under debris were reported by the Sharkey County Sheriff’s Office at Rolling Fork, as reported by the Vicksburg News. The report claimed that some police cars disappeared in Sharkey.
Large tracts of cotton, maize, and soybean fields, as well as catfish farming ponds, may be found in and around Rolling Fork. State emergency officials opened more than a half dozen shelters.
In a tweet late on Friday, Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves stated that rescue crews were working and that additional medical help was on the way.
Many in the Mississippi Delta are in need of prayer and God’s protection tonight, the message said. “Mississippi, keep an eye on the forecast and use caution tonight.”
On Friday morning, two people were killed when their automobile was washed away by floodwaters in southern Missouri. Six young adults were in the automobile that was washed away as its driver attempted to cross a bridge across a flooded stream in the Grovespring community, according to authorities.
Only four of the original six survivors made it to shore. Sgt. Thomas Young of the Missouri State Highway Patrol reported that at 3:30 a.m., the corpse of 20-year-old Grovespring resident Devon Holt was discovered, followed by that of 19-year-old Springfield resident Alexander Roman-Ranelli approximately six hours later.
According to Young, the motorist informed police that it was raining too hard to notice that a stream had flooded the bridge.
A lady was reported missing when her automobile was swept off the road by flash flooding caused by a tiny river in another county in southern Missouri. According to the Logan Rogersville Fire Protection District, the woman has been missing for some time. We were able to free two people from the automobile. The search teams were going to deploy boats and people to go along the riverside.