BOGUE CHITTO, Miss. (AP) — Powerful storms that spawned at least three tornadoes tore through several Mississippi counties, damaging around 500 homes, uprooting trees and injuring at least 17 people, authorities said Thursday.
There were no reports of deaths after the tornadoes cut across the state’s southwest late Wednesday evening, said Scott Simmons, a spokesperson for the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency.
He said 12 of those hurt were transported from a hard-hit trailer park in the small community of Bogue Chitto, about an hour’s drive south of the state capital in rural Lincoln County.
Most of the two dozen homes at Gene’s Mobile Home Supply were flattened into heaps of splintered boards and twisted metal. People picked through the debris Thursday morning under cloudy skies as a chain saw buzzed in the background.
Krystal Miller and six others — including babies as young as 4 weeks old — grabbed a Bible and sheltered in their home’s hallway when the tornado sent the building cartwheeling through the air.
“We just flipped, and it threw us all out,” she said. “It scattered everybody out. … I can’t find the Bible.”
She said her young son was in the hospital for monitoring and another child was injured in the face.
“The trailer is in pieces but we made it out,” Miller said. “I’m feeling grateful.”
One intact trailer lay flipped on its roof near the tree line. Several cars, some with hazard lights blinking, appeared to have been picked up by the storm.
“We know there were at least three tornadoes,” said Daniel Lamb, a meteorologist in the National Weather Service office in Jackson.
“The same storm produced at least two tornadoes from Franklin, Lincoln into Lawrence counties, and then there was another one from Lamar possibly into Forest County.”
