Joe Biden has declared a federal emergency for the areas hardest hit by Friday night’s deadly tornado that ripped through the Mississippi Delta, one of the poorest regions of the US.
At least 25 people were killed and dozens were injured in Mississippi as the storm tore through several towns on its hour-long path. One man was killed after his trailer home flipped several times in Alabama.
Biden’s emergency declaration will make federal funding available to Carroll, Humphreys, Monroe and Sharkey counties in Mississippi.
Search and recovery crews on Sunday resumed the daunting task of digging through the debris of flattened and battered homes, commercial buildings and municipal offices. The tornado flattened entire blocks, ripped a steeple off a church and toppled a municipal water tower. More than half a dozen shelters were opened in Mississippi to house people who had been made homeless.
The administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), Deanne Criswell, was scheduled to visit the state on Sunday to evaluate the destruction. Fema’s coordinating officer, John Boyle, has been appointed to oversee federal recovery operations. After Biden’s declaration, federal funding can be used for recovery efforts including temporary housing, home repairs, loans covering uninsured property losses and other individual and business programmes, the White House said.
The National Weather Service warned of a risk of more severe weather on Sunday, including high winds, large hail and possible tornadoes, in eastern Louisiana, south central Mississippi and south central Alabama.
Based on early data, the tornado received a preliminary EF-4 rating, the National Weather Service office in Jackson, Mississippi, said late on Saturday. An EF-4 tornado has top wind gusts of between 166mph and 200mph (265kph and 320kph), according to the service.
The tornado devastated a swath of the town of Rolling Fork, which has a population of 2,000, reducing homes to piles of rubble. “How anybody survived is unknown by me,” said Rodney Porter, who lives 20 miles (32km) south of Rolling Fork. When the storm hit on Friday night, he said, he drove there immediately to assist in any way he could. Porter arrived to find “total devastation” and said he smelled natural gas and heard people screaming for help in the dark. “Houses are gone, houses stacked on top of houses with vehicles on top of that,” he said.
Annette Body had driven to the hard-hit town of Silver City from nearby Belozi to survey the damage. She said she was feeling “blessed” because her own home was not destroyed, but other people she knew had lost everything. “Cried last night, cried this morning,” she said, looking around at flattened homes. “They said you need to take cover, but it happened so fast a lot of people didn’t even get a chance to take cover.”
The Mississippi governor, Tate Reeves, declared a state of emergency and vowed to help rebuild. He spoke with Biden, who also held a call with the state’s congressional delegation.
Preliminary estimates from storm reports and radar data indicate the tornado was on the ground for more than an hour and traversed at least 170 miles, said Lance Perrilloux, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Jackson office. “That’s rare – very, very rare,” he said, attributing the long path to widespread atmospheric instability.
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