|
Fielder’s Choice
By Barry Burleson Remember storm victims Our concerns over the weekend focused on fellow Mississippians in the path of destructive tornado activity. We
had watched the weather throughout the week – anticipating the storms.
Marshall County managed to escape the worst of the turbulent weather. The
first news I received was a tornado striking Yazoo City Saturday. My
thoughts turned to my acquaintance there – friend and newspaper
publisher Gary Andrews. Sunday, I got an e-mail
from Layne Bruce, executive director of the Mississippi Press
Association, letting fellow newspaper folks know that Gary and all his
staff members were OK. Later he forwarded this e-mail from Gary. “Yazoo
City was hit very hard by a tornado around noon on Saturday. As for me
and my wife, we were on our way home from South Carolina and heard
about the storm when we were in Atlanta. We came home to some broken
trees and limbs in the yard but none on our home. My neighborhood
suffered extensive damage but the main thrust of the storm was about a
quarter of a mile south of us. Our bookkeeper was not as fortunate, as
she lost a bedroom, a bath, and had more damage to her home. “Keep
Yazoo City on your prayer list and remember the ones who lost loved
ones and their homes. One of our sales reps lost her best friend in the
storm. “We had one shopping center hurt very
badly. The old Yazoo Motors building had extensive damage. For those of
you familiar with Yazoo, the storm came through ‘four points’ – one of
the main intersections we have. It leveled Ribeye’s, one of our better
eating establishments and Hillcrest Baptist Church.”
After
reading his e-mail, I also had memories of April 3, 1974, when a
tornado leveled Guin, Ala., while my family was in a storm house just a
few miles away. The storm that ripped through
central Mississippi’s rural area last weekend killed 10 people and
damaged many homes and businesses. It is being called the worst natural
disaster to hit Mississippi since Hurricane Katrina. It was an EF-4
tornado. A damage report released Sunday by the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency, includes: • Attala County – 35 homes damaged and seven injuries. • Choctaw – 114 homes/mobile homes damaged, two businesses, 15 injuries. • Holmes – 60 homes damaged and 25 injuries. • Monroe – 48 homes/mobile homes damaged, three businesses damaged, one injury. • Union – 63 homes/mobile homes damaged and one injury. • Warren – 42 homes/mobile homes damaged. • Yazoo – 319 homes/mobile homes damaged. We
slept downstairs Friday night due to the bad weather. I awoke Saturday
morning to more thunder, lightning and rain, plus our electricity was
out. We also had no water pressure and later found that a piece of the
pipe was broken near the meter in our front yard. Unfortunately, it was
on the portion running toward the house – my expense. But I should not have fretted over that small thing. Other Mississippians were suffering from loss of family and homes.
|
