Altruism carries the day

As in many emergencies, the response to widespread disaster in large and small communities is a pulling together.

Such was the case in the February Ice Storm of 1994, and once again following Ice Storm 2026, dubbed FERN, which arrived with sleet and ice, followed by freezing rain wrecking the power grid in the area.

The Marshall County Board of Supervisors set aside all personal grievances at the February 2 board meeting which was dedicated to formulating a response to the emergency which at first was concerned with opening up the roads that were covered with four or five inches of sleet ice, sometimes covered on top with snow.

The South Reporter promised at the February 2 meeting of the board of supervisors that supervisors could relate their personal experiences and challenges related to the devastation that left most citizens without power for several weeks or more. At the time of this writing, there remained a number of customers with North East Electric Power and the Holly Springs Utility Department still without power.

District 5 Friday, February 13

Supervisor Ronnie O’Neil Bennett described the community response to the power outage and the challenges faced by his constituents.

“The morning it hit, I saw the devastation in the whole county and my district, especially, was hit the hardest,” Bennett said. “We collected all the people we could and got together to sort of cut our way through every road and to every house.”

It took three days to cut through all the roads and remove the trees.

“We could not have done it without the community. It was absolutely huge,” he said.

Jason Motz, emergency response director and the Potts Camp and Waterford Fire Department set up the command center. Robbie Yeats, owner of Bethlehem Poultry, opened his business in Potts Camp providing showers and plates of food. Cajun Navy came in and cooked meals. Volunteers from Mississippi had helped New Orleans during the Hurricane Katrina disaster that flooded the New Orleans area.

“It was just an unusual experience pulling together to get this done,” Bennett said.

Community members used their heavy equipment to clear right-of-way for linemen whose equipment got stuck. North East Electric, Holly Springs Utility Department and New Albany Power all serve the Potts Camp area.

The sheriff’s department helicopter went to the air to take photos of the damage to HSUD lines to assist Holly Springs in getting power restored.

February 12, essentials food, diapers and emergency medical supplies were being delivered.

“It’s been a great community response,” Bennett said. “I could truly see the love. I have to stay positive because I’m a county leader, to let people know we are here for them, that they are not alone.”

With much of the power grid restored, there were still customers out of power on Bethany Road, Friday.

“This is not a marathon, this is a slow roll,” Bennett said.

Motz is leading the team to assess damages. Bennett said there is a lot of red tape and a slow process to gather all the information needed to seek state and federal assistance for the recovery of the county.

Bennett, who lives on Highway 349, said he was out of water and electricity for 10 days.

“This has been such a blur,” he said, “seven days a week every day. From Sunday to now I have not left District 5. I have put almost 5,000 miles on my truck. We have been rolling.”

The problem now is mobilizing the cleanup process.

“All this ice just about destroyed these roads,” he said. “People have to be patient. State Highways are just as bad. Supervisors got roll-off dumpsters to collect household garbage. Too much garbage was being generated.”

Bennett said some parts of the county never lost power.

“We had freezing rain,” Bennett said. “We are resilient. We are Marshall County. We are going to get through this.”

Bennett’s wife, who has worked as a medicaid supervisor 26 years, and his girls had to go to Tupelo because the Internet has been down in Marshall County due to loss of electricity.

“She’s a public servant, also,” Bennett said. “I’m a public servant. I work for you. Don’t forget we are public servants and we work for the people.”

Bennett was asked for a final word.

“I’m tired, Boss,” he said.

District 4 Thursday, February 12

“It was a tragic situation, even though we had prior notice,” said District 4 supervisor George Zinn III. “It was more than I thought it would be because it was ice.” He said the ice could not be scraped off the roads like a snow plow does. The road crews had to wait until the weather warmed up to clear the roads.

Zinn praised employees.

“We really had dedicated employees. They had to work seven days a week. They were out there in it, to try and make it more passible,” Zinn said. “Whatever I think, it’s Gods work and whatever we do, we have to accept it and it takes time to be resolved at its pace.”

Zinn said he was without power five days but his neighbors were out five more days.

He thanked sheriff Kenny Dickerson and his patrolling officers, including Major David Cook for transporting employees to work and posting on the sheriff’s Facebook page and also for transporting food and water to people who were unable to leave their houses.

He said Lt. Governor Delbert Hosemann made a special trip to Marshall County to assess the damage and ask if the county needed to borrow money for the disaster cleanup, pending a declaration of an emergency. Hosemann met with county leaders for about 35 to 45 minutes at the county’s emergency management office, he said.

“There were some people trying to help,” Zinn said. “A lot has to be coordinated. We are a food pantry, not a food bank. We are not set up for extraordinary measures.”

Zinn explained that Feeding Hearts food pantry in Victoria was closed and the driveway was blocked with a sheet of ice and the power at the pantry was off.

Zinn is the director of North Mississippi Community Research and Training Development.

He said he has natural gas at his dwelling on Hernando road and natural gas is supplied from Red Banks Road.

He had heat, no lights, and no major issues, just inconvenience,” he said.

District 3 Friday, February 13

District 3 supervisor Terry Rodgers said he had electricity supplied by North Central Electric Power Association and propane for heat.

There were no outages that took place in the Byahlia and Barton area, he said. The Byhalia community was supplied by gas and water, he said.

“This wasn’t my first ice storm,” Rodgers said. “The only problem was roads were iced over. We didn’t pretreat anything (the roads) and the snow plow won’t work on ice.”

He said the ice was packed down about five inches “and wasn’t going nowhere,” meaning not melting.

The roads were treacherous for the first four or five days, he said.

Byhalia had very few meals served and no warming centers, he said. The worst of the storm was east and south in District 4. Byhalia did not lose lights. It is served by North Central Electric Power Association.

Rodgers said a few constituents complained about the roads. The ice in 1994 was gone in about two days and the weather was warm. However, he remembers the ice storm of 1974 which stayed on the ground and was cold for about two weeks.

“We (North Central) worked a couple of weeks with North Central and then worked for Holly Springs in 1974,” he said.

“I appreciate all the help we got with our contractors and with all the help we got on the roads,” he said.

Standard Gravel helped clear the roads two days and Chuck White with White Construction helped four days and helped in Johnny Walker’s district, too, Rodgers said. The crews cleared with road graders and with rubber-tire front-end loaders a couple of days.

Rodgers noted Highway 310 and 311 had lots of potholes caused by the ice.

District 2, Monday, February 16

District 2 supervisor Johnny Walker said he was out of power four days at his residence on Kelly Lane.

“They (HSUD) started in our area and went that way,” he said. “We didn’t lose power right away.”

Walker’s last call was Sunday, February 12 while he was in church where he received a call that a tree fell on Rossville Road that took out two power poles and associated power lines.

He said county crews spent the first 12 days trying to scrape ice off the roads with motor graders and snowplows from daylight to dark.

“I was following them to see which main roads to go on,” he said. “Contractors came in on Day 12 to assist. First of all we don’t have equipment and second, this was not snow, this was ice. It was frozen so hard, we went over it four times and couldn’t get it off.”

The sun helped but the temperature didn’t get above 32 degrees for two weeks.

Walker said on day 10 a station was set up at Clear Creek voting precinct to pass out water and meals ready to eat.

“Then I started delivering water to people,” he said. “My wife would see it on Facebook and she would get a list of addresses. It was very dangerous for two to three days. When we got lights back on and people’s pipes unthawed, that helped a lot. Then I started getting complaints about trash. Dumpsters were out in different locatons. Garbage pickup is back on schedule now.”

He said not so many limbs and trees were down in his district because District 2 had four inches of sleet.

“Potts Camp, got freezing rain. We didn’t have anything like trees down in Potts Camp. We just had bad roads,” Walker said. “We swapped out motorgrader blades three times. Ice was eating the blades up. Now we got potholes.”

He said heavy trucks were stranding in the middle of main highways in the beginning. Then the trucks started cutting through the backroads.

“That didn’t help a bit,” he said. “It’s going to be a while getting all these potholes fixed? We had lots of complaints. Why don’t you get 311 or 72 potholes fixed. That’s the state. In my eyes, they dropped the ball. Trucks were stuck in the middle of the road on Highway 72 for a week and a half. It was bad. We had some backroads trucks got stuck on, Slayden Road, Red Banks Road and Cayce Road. Those three main roads, we kept them as open as we could.”

“All in all, for the county, they can say what they want, we busted our butts. It was something constant for two and a half weeks.”

“We got a lot of problems in the county. Now we need to do something about HSUD. What they used to be complaining about is rotten poles,” he said. “I got two bills last week. Why are people getting all these two bills. I feel for Mr. Terry. Byhalia and Chickasaw Electric didn’t lose power. In 1994, everybody in HSUD had their power back on in a few days.”

District 1 Friday, February 13 District 1 supervisor Goston “Redd” Glover, said he did not personally incur a lot of negativity from his constituents, “once I started talking to people.” His main activity was picking up people who were without power and taking them to family and friends that had some heat. He transported over 100 people, he said.

He also carried people to the Holly Springs Multi-Purpose Center where they could take showers and eat.

“People were very, very appreciative,” he said. “Most people wanted to know someone cared about them.”

He said he had a four-wheel drive and could carry men and women and children, black and white and people in wheel chairs.

He said he didn’t just help those in his district alone.

“We were able to get power and lights on a lot quicker,” he said. “By Tuesday morning (February 10) about 90 percent of people in my district had power back.”

He said road clearing was provided by Jon Woods and White Construction, working throughout but especially in District 1.

“He did a magnificent job in my District getting the roads cleared,” Glover said.

County Administrator Friday, February 13

County administrator Tim Powell said for the county the ice storm was about getting resources to the people.

The Sheriff’s Department and Emergency Management and volunteer fire department volunteers helped get resources to the local communities, because it was so widespread.

He was a little pre-teenage boy living in Pontotoc during the ice storm of 1994, he said. That experience was about fun, he said.

The county response is moving out of the emergency phase to the recovery phase February 13, he said. Damage assessments are being made and information is being gathered in case money is freed up by the U.S. President by approving an emergency declaration that will let the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Mississippi Emergency Management Agency obtain funds to help pay for debris removal.

He said the federal process is not going to be a rapid process, but it is moving faster than it was in the beginning.

“We’ve had a good response to this overall,” he said. “We just want to keep it going this way.”