Tornado leaves 4 dead in Mississippi

A woman grieves Saturday while sitting on the slab of her destroyed home in Hattiesburg, Miss. The mayor reported “significant injuries” and structural damage around the city.
A woman grieves Saturday while sitting on the slab of her destroyed home in Hattiesburg, Miss. The mayor reported “significant injuries” and structural damage around the city.

HATTIESBURG, Miss. -- A pre-dawn tornado Saturday left four people dead in Hattiesburg, as it tore through southern Mississippi, ripping up trees and tearing roofs off homes and churches.

photo

AP/ROGELIO V. SOLIS

A first responder and search dog hunt for bodies and injured people among the rubble after Saturday morning’s tornado in Hattiesburg, Miss.

The tornado was part of a wall of storms that knocked out power to nearly 16,000 customers, mostly in Forrest County, where Hattiesburg is the county seat.

The Mississippi Highway Patrol reported that Interstate 59 north of Hattiesburg, the state's fourth-largest city, was closed for a time Saturday because of debris.

At sunrise Saturday, more than 40 firefighters from across Mississippi gathered outside Hattiesburg police headquarters to join the search for the dead and injured.

Equipped with dogs and all-terrain vehicles, they conducted door-to-door searches stretching from police headquarters to nearby William Carey University in one of the most heavily damaged areas.

Mayor Johnny DuPree signed an emergency declaration for his city and reported "significant injuries" and structural damage.

Greg Flynn of the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency said "massive damage" was reported in a three-county area after the tornado hit about 4 a.m. At least 50 people were treated for injuries at two area hospitals, he said.

Also Saturday, Gov. Phil Bryant visited the damaged areas.

Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney said insured damage is likely to top $200 million.

"You've got so many buildings that are for all practical purposes totally destroyed," said Andy Case, a disaster recovery specialist with the Department of Insurance.

Photos and television images of the damaged areas showed cars flipped over, sometimes piled on top of each other, and parts of houses ripped into shards of wood and debris.

Officials at William Carey University, a Christian university with a campus in Hattiesburg, closed the campus Saturday and evacuated about 800 students.

The university said some students had minor injuries, and some dorms were damaged. Almost every building on campus has at least superficial damage, authorities said. Many are heavily damaged.

For students who were in their dorms when the tornado struck, it was terrifying.

Tegan Sager, a freshman from Hermiston, Ore., said she'd never been in a tornado. She said bursts of lightning lit up the outside just before the tornado hit. She and 20 other students huddled in the first floor hallway of their dormitory, cradling their heads in their hands.

"That's when the panels from the roof were falling in," she said. "Girls were screaming, and a person next to me got cut on the leg."

The campus has about 3,200 students. On Saturday afternoon parents and students streamed onto campus to salvage belongings from damaged dorms. School authorities weren't sure Saturday when the campus will reopen.

In other parts of the storm-damaged region, people took stock of the damage Saturday, and hugged friends and neighbors.

Forrest County Coroner Butch Benedict released the names of the dead late Saturday. They were Earnest Perkins, 58; Cleveland Madison, 20; David Wayne McCoy, 47; and Simona Cox, 72.

Monica McCarty's father, Earnest Perkins, died in the same trailer park where she and her boyfriend lived, and her son, Cleveland Madison, was crushed to death as he slept in the home of McCarty's mother, where he lived.

Standing amid the rubble Saturday, McCarty wept. "They couldn't get him out of the house. They said he was lying in the bed," McCarty said of her son.

Her boyfriend Tackeem Molley said he and McCarty were in a trailer when the storm hit. Molley, whose bare foot was bandaged, said he climbed out through a hole in what had either been the trailer's roof or a wall.

"I had a little hole I could squeeze out of," he said.

Elsewhere, the McMorris family gathered at a parking lot of a ruined gas station across the street from their house in Hattiesburg, they took stock of their losses and what had been saved.

Darryl McMorris recalled the harrowing ordeal.

As rain was pouring down in the pre-dawn darkness, and the wind was picking up, he said, he ran for his daughters' bedroom. The windows started blowing out as he dove on top of the girls, grabbing one under each arm as he tried to protect them.

"As soon as I did that it seemed like we were flying in the air," he said. Walls began to collapse, and the house began to blow apart. His daughters screamed, and he held on tight.

When the tornado had passed, he and his two girls were under a collapsed wall.

Their house was destroyed. The bedding was tossed 50 feet into a tree, but they were alive.

"I lost everything, but I'm just glad I didn't lose my daughters," McMorris said.

"I don't see how we survived this," said his fiancee, Shanise.

The National Weather Service reported that 3.42 inches of rain fell over a six- to seven-hour period Saturday morning, and another round of storms were forecast for Saturday night.

Storms were also forecast for Arkansas. A large part of Arkansas was under a tornado watch, and forecasters warned that severe storms could develop in the evening.

The Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., said multiple rounds of severe storms were possible Saturday afternoon into early today from Louisiana and Arkansas eastward to north Florida, Georgia and South Carolina.

The prediction center said a swath of southeast Arkansas, including Little Rock, had an enhanced risk of severe weather, including hail, high wind and tornadoes.

Information for this article was contributed by staff members of The Associated Press.

A Section on 01/22/2017

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