(Rolling Fork) The brick house was pulverized. All that remains is the floor littered with personal belongings, a pink backpack, a miraculously standing shampoo bottle. After the violent tornado that devastated Rolling Fork, Mississippi, the inhabitants took the measure of the upheaval of their lives.
On this hot and sunny Sunday, under a sky still blue before possible new storms, they began to arrive in the morning in the middle of gutted houses and deformed trees. To assess the damage and salvage belongings, and also because this debris is all that’s left of their lives before Friday night, when the tornado hit, killing at least 25 people in Mississippi, including 13 in Rolling Fork.
“Twenty years of my life gone,” said Shirley Stamps, 58, in front of her bed covered in dust and bits of wood.
“But God be praised, God be praised,” she added fervently. “We are here, we are alive.”
That evening, she told AFP, she had just finished dinner with her family and was about to put on her nightgown when a worrying wind was heard. The noise swells, the threat becomes more precise. Her granddaughter taking a bath, Shirley Stamps begins to knock on her door for the family to take refuge in the bathroom, which is considered solid.
“We all got into it and got on the ground,” she said. On Sunday, with the exception of part of the facade, the bathroom was the only room in the house still standing.
Across the street, a gloomy Shakeria Brown inspects her car, which has been crushed by a tree. Her house almost collapsed.
She then covers her head with a blanket to try to shelter herself with her baby somehow, until a neighbor comes to get her out of this hell.
What will she do now? For now, she is staying with friends. But she will have to find a solution, because “the owner is not going to rebuild”.
The latter, who owns several houses in this predominantly black and low-income neighborhood, confirms.
“What can we do? “said the African-American man who prefers to remain anonymous, observing the devastation with a stoic air. Insurance will not give enough to rebuild in this region, “one of the poorest in the United States”, he says.
Unless the federal government intervenes, “it will be cleaned up and then it will remain empty”, concludes the owner.
Kimberly Berry, 46, works in a catfish processing plant and lives in Anguilla, near Rolling Fork.
His house was flattened by the storm, which washed away the walls and the roof, leaving only the wooden floor, a chest of drawers, a tub lying on its side, various personal belongings strewn about.
The tornado was selective. For long kilometres, large areas are untouched. Next door is devastation.
The insurance won’t cover anything, she told AFP, because she built on flood-prone land. So she plans to buy a mobile home.
Along with her sisters, sitting under an umbrella while someone hands out water bottles and sandwiches, they all want to send a message to the federal government.
“Send us help. We need help,” said Dorthy Berry, 65.
But “don’t be sorry, darling,” the teacher told a journalist who barely had time to take refuge in a church before the disaster.
“I am full of gratitude. We’re still alive, that’s all that matters,” she insists.
