“I was just thinking, ‘If I can still open my eyes and move around, I’m good,’” he said. Windows broke as his daughters cried and his partner prayed. Sheddrick Bell, his partner and two daughters crouched in a closet of their Rolling Fork home for 15 minutes as the tornado barreled through. The tornado also mangled a cotton warehouse and ripped the steeple off a Baptist church. It didn’t help that the community hospital on the west side of town was damaged, forcing patients to be transferred. Others abandoned the chase to drive injured people to the hospital. The damage in Rolling Fork was so widespread that several storm chasers - who follow severe weather and often put up livestreams showing dramatic funnel clouds - pleaded for search and rescue help. President Joe Biden also promised federal help, describing the damage as “heartbreaking.” Tate Reeves issued a State of Emergency and vowed to help rebuild as he headed to view the damage in an area speckled with wide expanses of cotton, corn and soybean fields and catfish farming ponds. WATCH: UN scientists warn drastic steps needed to prevent climate change catastrophe Power lines were pinned under decades-old oaks, their roots torn from the ground. Throughout Saturday, survivors walked around dazed and in shock as they broke through debris and fallen trees with chain saws, searching for survivors. One man died in Morgan County, Alabama, the sheriff’s department there said in a tweet. Other parts of the Deep South were digging out from damage caused by other suspected twisters. Four people previously reported missing had been found. The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency announced late Saturday afternoon in a tweet that the death toll had risen to 25 and that dozens of people were injured. The Jackson office cautioned it was still gathering information on the tornado. An EF-4 tornado has top wind gusts between 166 mph and 200 mph (265 kph and 320 kph), according to the service. “There’s just the breeze that’s running, going through - just nothing.”īased on early data, the tornado received a preliminary EF-4 rating, the National Weather Service office in Jackson said late Saturday in a tweet. “There’s nothing left,” said Wonder Bolden, holding her granddaughter, Journey, while standing outside the remnants of her mother’s now-leveled mobile home in Rolling Fork. Residents hunkered down in bath tubs and hallways during Friday night’s storm and later broke into a John Deere store that they converted into a triage center for the wounded. The tornado devastated a swath of the Mississippi Delta town of Rolling Fork, reducing homes to piles of rubble, flipping cars on their sides and toppling the town’s water tower. (AP) - Rescuers raced Saturday to search for survivors and help hundreds of people left homeless after a powerful tornado cut a devastating path through Mississippi, killing at least 25 people, injuring dozens, and flattening entire blocks as it carved a path of destruction for more than an hour.
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