According to a preliminary report, at least 23 people were killed in this southern state. This meteorological phenomenon, as impressive as it is difficult to predict, is relatively common in the United States.
US President Joe Biden spoke on Saturday of “heartbreaking images” in a tornado-hit Mississippi state (south) that killed at least 23 people.
“The images across Mississippi are heartbreaking,” he said in a statement, noting that the state will “do whatever it takes to help” “while it lasts.”
An assessment still provisional
At least 23 people were killed when a tornado ripped through Mississippi, the southern state governor said Saturday, leaving a devastated landscape in its wake.
“It’s a tragedy,” Gov. Tate Reeves said on Twitter, citing “devastating damage” after the tornado swept more than 150km west to east through the Mississippi River on Friday night.
And the toll could get worse. “Unfortunately, these numbers are expected to change upwards,” Mississippi State Emergency Services (MSEMA) said on Twitter. Search and rescue teams are deployed to find victims.
“Everything Was Swept Away”
In Rolling Fork, a western Mississippi town of about 2,000, pictures taken Saturday morning showed rows of homes ripped from their meager foundations, streets littered with debris and cars toppled on their roofs. In addition, two semi-trailers were stacked on top of each other.
Trees were uprooted and pieces of metal wrapped around the trunks, while a house that was still standing but rickety had the ground collapsed.
“Almost everything was swept away” in the city, Patricia Perkins, a 61-year-old resident, told AFP over the phone. “Most of the shops were destroyed by the tornado,” says an employee at a tool shop.
Debris free
Aaron Rigsby, a tornado hunter, describes arriving at the scene Friday night and “hearing screams from people trapped in the rubble calling for help.” “There was a lady who didn’t manage to take shelter in time and was mowed down, the roof of her house fell on her,” he told AFP, also on the phone.
“I managed to extricate her from the rubble” and seek help when she injured her leg, he adds.
Another lady found herself “stuck between her sofa, parts of the roof and a fridge,” he said again, speaking of “the same scenes all over town.”
Relatively common phenomenon
The “priority at this stage” is “to keep living people safe and to locate people to verify they are safe,” MSEMA’s Malory White said. This Saturday, the Jackson, Mississippi capital, branch of the National Weather Service (NWS) announced that “tornado watch has been lifted throughout the affected area.”
“More showers and thunderstorms are expected in our area,” he tweeted, noting that “they are not forecast to be heavy.”
As impressive as it is difficult to predict, this meteorological phenomenon is relatively common in the United States, particularly in the central and southern parts of the country. As of December 2021, around 80 people had lost their lives after tornadoes hit Kentucky.