Shocking footage captured by drone after tornado passes through Mississippi

There is nothing left in the house William Barnes in Silver CityA small town West Mississippi, after a tornado ripped it from its foundation. On Saturday, Barnes stared in disbelief at the vacant lot where he lived for 20 years, with cinder blocks scattered and broken wainscoting where his home once stood.

“We lost everything, but we made it out alive,” he said with his granddaughter in his arms.

The stories were the same throughout A town of over 200 people, it is 97 kilometers northwest of Jackson, the state capital. Tragic stories of total destruction, incredible survival and tragic deaths followed Friday’s tornado killed at least 25 people in Mississippi and one in Alabama as it moved through the Deep South at 170 mph.

The Images captured by a drone show how the cyclone destroyed everything in its path, turning houses into piles of rubble, overturning cars and toppling the city’s water tower. Residents took shelter in bathtubs and sidewalks during Friday night’s storm, then besieged a John Deere store that became a triage center for their injured.

Lakisha Glinsey, Yaclyn James and Shawquedine Burnett were returning home from Silver City after spending the night in the nearby town of Belzoni when the tornado hit. They pulled into her driveway and opened the car doors, but it was too late.

“I saw houses flying everywhere,” Burnett said. “The house on the corner was spinning.”

They closed the car doors and waited.

“It only lasted three minutes, but it was the longest three minutes I’ve ever had,” Glinsey said. “I will never forget”.

When they got out of the car, they found the house in ruins. The officers then took them by bus to a hotel where they slept after 4am.

Christine George said her parents and grandmother had a narrow escape when the tornado blew out their windows and took part of the roof off their house.

She said her parents ducked behind a door that was still unhung and threw a blanket over her grandmother to protect herself from the glass that “hit the hall and splashed everyone.”

“Everything around him disappeared,” he said, sometimes putting his hand on his chest. “They were lucky. That’s all”.

Lived by Christine Chinn Silver City Throughout his life, She took shelter in the porch with her husband and son, covering themselves with a blanket as they desperately tried to protect themselves. After the storm, the roof of the house he had lived in for 17 years was missing and cars overturned in his garden.

“Everything went quiet and all of a sudden everything crashed like a big train or something,” he said, adding that many of his belongings were unsalvageable.

She said she was very scared and had never experienced anything like this before.

The same fear took hold Residents of Rolling Fork, about 30 miles away, the tornado tore through the town of less than 2,000.

Derrick Brady Jr., 9, said he tried to cover his 7-year-old sister, Kylie Carter, with his body. She had to get into the tub as Mom pushed herself against the bathroom door and tried to keep it closed. He described feeling pushed and pulled by the force of the hurricane.

“I was scared, but I was brave at the time,” he said. “We had to say our own prayers in our heads.”

Wanda Barfield, Derrick and Kylie’s grandmother, said she spent Friday night and Saturday running through the devastated city trying to account for loved ones. After the storm passed, he did not stop calling his relatives’ mobile phones, but no one answered. He found his sister-in-law dead in the rubble.

He says his family is doing everything they can to survive.

“Our lives are more important than anything else. Job, money, car, clothes, sandals… all that will be available,” he said. “For me and my house, we are going to serve the Lord.”

James Hancock was assisting with search and rescue efforts in Rolling Fork late Friday when the storm tore through the city.

He was part of a team that forced him to open a shop which members of the community started using to look after the injured. It took two hours for ambulances to reach the shop through the rubble-strewn streets to treat them, he said. As he walked from the ruins of one house to the next, he heard people shouting in the darkness.

“You could hear people crying out for help, and it was devastating,” he said.

With information from AP

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