Straight-line winds of up to 75 mph are being blamed for significant damage inflicted on eastern Tallahatchie County at about 4:30 Wednesday afternoon, March 30.
Tallahatchie County Emergency Management Agency (TCEMA) Director Thad Roberts said the silver lining is there were no reports of injuries. “That is the great part,” he added.
In all, 46 major structures, all but two of them homes, were damaged, Roberts noted. Sheds and other outbuildings are not included.
Of the damaged structures, 24 were within the city of Charleston and 22 outside, including some on Highway 32 east and west of the city as well as Highway 35 in the Paynes community and Oak Grove Road northeast of Charleston, among other areas.
Five residences — one of conventional construction and four mobile homes — were destroyed in the county, damage assessments show.
Three houses sustained major damage, 29 suffered minor damage and the rest were listed as affected, said TCEMA’s Ashley Williams.
The single-wide mobile home of Geneva Campbell, located at 1147 Lindley Lane, southwest of Charleston, was demolished last Wednesday.
Campbell was at work and her two teenage children were at the home of their grandparents when the storm hit, so the house was vacant. Good thing, too, because their mobile home was lifted off its pad, ripped to shreds and cast aside in a scattered heap.
The next day, even while sifting through the rubble of what had been her home in search of anything to salvage, Campbell voiced gratitude.
“God is awesome. God is good,” she said. “That was just a blessing that no one was home at the time that it happened. We can replace material things, but life, we can’t get that back.”
Across from Campbell’s property, another single-wide mobile home was ravaged and the Bethlehem Missionary Baptist Church sustained considerable damage to multiple sections of its roof.
A section of the metal roof that covered the elevated walkway from Tallahatchie General Hospital to the James C. Kennedy Wellness Center was ripped off, and there was damage to other buildings there. At the TGH administrative offices, a tree fell onto the garage and smashed a truck parked outside.
Numerous other vehicles were reported damaged by trees or flying debris.
Dozens of trees — some of historical interest to the area — were uprooted or had large limbs snapped off like toothpicks. Numerous county roads were blocked by fallen trees, and Tallahatchie County Road Department crews were out in force late Wednesday working to remove them.
Charleston Police Chief Jerry Williams II said a four-block area of northeast Charleston was evacuated about 6 Wednesday night due to a natural gas leak caused when a tree was uprooted, pulling up a section of a main gas line at the corner of East Chestnut and Lallie streets.
Williams said the precautionary evacuation involved about 140 people along sections of North Cossar, Gay, Tiger, Pine, Lallie and Chestnut streets. He noted that evacuees were invited to go to the Tallahatchie County Safe Room in Charleston until given the all clear to return to their homes. That green light was not forthcoming for many of the evacuees until midday or later on Thursday.
Tommy Harrington, a resident of 619 E. Chestnut St., Charleston, lives a stone’s throw from where the gas leak occurred. A large oak on the east side of his two-story home was also uprooted, narrowly missing the house.
As a Mississippi Department of Transportation employee, Harrington learned of the damage at home from photos sent to him by his wife. He was removing tree limbs and other storm debris from Highway 32.
“We were real blessed,” he said. “If that big tree had fallen on the house, it would be in bad shape.”
One street over and one block down from Harrington, at 519 E. Gay, DeAngelo White watched the storm grow in intensity last week.
“It was scary,” he said. “I was looking out the front window and the rain was falling at a regular angle, and then all of a sudden the rain started coming straight toward the window,” in a horizontal fashion.
The storm uprooted a large oak tree beside the house, causing it to plummet onto a fence and into the yard of the neighbor next door, missing their house by about 15 feet.
In addition to the natural gas leak on Chestnut, Williams said a petroleum leak occurred at the Mr. Jiffy convenience store, located at the corner of North Cossar and East Gay, when a gas pump was blown over by the wind. He said first responders turned off the breaker to the pump and secured the area without further incident.
At the home of Brady and Jennifer Taylor on Highway 32 just east of Charleston, a large oak tree crashed onto the roof of the house while members of the family were standing in the hall below the impact. No one was injured.
In a social media post, Jennifer Taylor commented, “Believe in God always! He is real and he protected us.” She later added, “This storm was powerful but God’s grace and mercy was much more powerful.”
Roberts said the Safe Room was opened at 1:30 p.m. last Wednesday. Over two-dozen people sought refuge there as severe weather approached the county.
Tallahatchie was under a Wind Advisory, a Severe Thunderstorm Warning foretelling wind gusts up to 70 mph and a Tornado Watch.
Because of the thunderstorm warning, Roberts said his office triggered the county’s 13 community-based alert sirens at 4:25 p.m.
“No tornado,” Roberts noted, when asked about the nature of the storm. “Straight-line winds is what we’re saying right now. That could change.”
In response to a query about the local storm, the National Weather Service Memphis office said in a statement, “We are in the process of investigating security cam footage and damage photos to determine whether there was a tornado in Tallahatchie County. Should have some more concrete evidence in the coming days.”
