From staff reports

Trees down across county; 10,000 without electricity

Winds in county top those recorded with Katrina

Water-soaked Warren County received a second dose of weather-related misery Friday when waves of high-wind storms slammed the area, downing tress and destroying homes while leaving much of the county without electricity. Injuries were reported to be minor.

The National Weather Service in Jackson said winds in Vicksburg reached 80 mph at the height of the storms.

That contrasts with 75 mph winds reported in the city on Aug. 29, 2005, the day Hurricane Katrina devastated the Mississippi Gulf Coast and much of south Louisiana.

The weather service also reported that 1.35 inches of rainfall was recorded in the county.

Gwen Coleman, emergency management director for Warren County, said representatives of the National Weather Service were expected in the area today in an attempt to determine if the storms were tornadoes or straight-line winds.

The storms rolled in at about 11:30 a.m., just about two hours after the Lower Mississippi River Forecast Center raised the anticipated Mississippi River crest at Vicksburg to 49 feet on April 13, five days later than had been announced a day earlier.

The storms had “done $150,000 to $200,000 in damage” at Warren Central High School off Mississippi 27, Vicksburg Warren School District Superintendent Dr. James Price said.

Entergy Vicksburg spokesman Don Arnold said 12,000 electricity customers were without power at the height of the storm and 10,000 remained without electricity at nearly 8 p.m. He said outages could last 48 hours.

River Region Medical Center on U.S. 61 North and Vicksburg’s Water Treatment Plant on E.W. Haining Road had power restored by mid-afternoon, Arnold said. River Region spokesman Diane Gawronski said the hospital operated on generators for three hours before power was restored.

Margaret Collins was in her mobile home at 1259 Warriors Trail when a tree smashed through it, leaving her with bruises and bumps, said her son, Eddie Pettus.

Separately, Warren County Sheriff Martin Pace said Chief Deputy Jay McKenzie was driving on Grove Street when he saw a tree fall, hitting a car and injuring its driver, though the driver declined medical treatment.

Pace also said a “few minor injuries” were reported in the Eagle Lake area.

Pace, a law enforcement officer in Warren County for 29 years, said he had never seen so much widespread damage that was not hurricane-related.

“It came in in the southwest corner of the county, hit the middle of the city and went all the way up to Oak Ridge and Russellville,” he said.

“We have no idea of knowing how many houses across Warren County have been damaged,” he said. “Some people are not even calling 911. They’re just calling their insurance agents.”

He had been made aware of much of the damage simply because “deputies just drove up on it,” Pace said.

The county’s emergency dispatch operation reported “a minimum of 65 calls of trees down” on power lines, across streets or in houses, said Director Michael Gaul. He said seven houses were reported to have trees on or in houses.

Gaul said the dispatch center in the basement of the Warren County Courthouse had received three calls in which residents said they had spotted funnel clouds or tornadoes, but those could not be confirmed.

Trees — some giant old oaks — were reported down on roads and streets including Rifle Range, Warrenton, Halls Ferry, Porters Chapel, Cain Ridge, Beechwood, Culkin and Douglas roads; Cherry, Drummond, Speed, Road Runner, Washington and Mulvihill streets; and Chapel Hills, Autumn, Wisteria and Redhawk drives.

Nita Wigley said she was watching television with her dog inside her home at Cherry and Chambers streets when a one of those historic trees was uprooted and came to rest near her front door.

“I went in the bathroom and just held her,” Wigley said. “It sounded like they said it does, like a train.”

Two huge oaks were uprooted on Cain Ridge Road — one blocking traffic for hours and another slicing through the home of Larry and Stacy Hartley.

“I was at work and the neighbor called,” Larry Hartley said, adding his wife also was not home at the time.

“And she just moved her (Ford) Expedition on Sunday. It was parked right there,” Hartley said, pointing to where some heavy limbs landed.

Chip Lofton, an insurance agent at Nationwide, rushed in the wind-blown rain to make his girlfriend’s sorority formal — in Memphis.

“I gotta catch a 7:15 bus,” Lofton said, rolling his duffel bag down debris-filled Cain Ridge Road.

Heavy tree and limb damage was also reported in the Timberlane Subdivision off south Halls Ferry Road, on Warriors Trail in the Bovina area and at Eagle Lake.

Warren County Volunteer Fire Coordinator Kelly Worthy, who was at Eagle Lake despite its most-direct access along Mississippi 465 being cut off by rising floodwater, said one home was destroyed and several mobile homes were overturned in what he called straight-line winds.

With power out across much of the area, gasoline was hard to come by, and at the few stations up and running, lines were reported to be long — a scene reminiscent of the days after Hurricane Katrina’s winds reached Vicksburg in 2005.

“I was on my way to pick up my daughters from the baby sitter,” Curtis Hampton said, standing next to his pickup after it ran out of gas on North Frontage Road. “I tried to make it.”

Construction at the Playground at Catfish Row, which had been under construction by volunteers guided by a national firm since Wednesday, was called to a halt at mid-day Friday, and work was expected to resume as soon as possible.

Officials with Junior Auxiliary of Vicksburg, which is organizing the playground effort, said the playground was not damaged.

At Warren Central, Dr. Price said winds mimicked those in 2004 that ripped off a roof and dumped water into buildings.

He said three 30-ton air conditioners on top of the school “were tossed around.”

Two Warren Central coaches on outside lunch duty said it was something out of the movie “Tornado.”

“It was the longest 5 seconds of my life,” coach Matt Lum said. Lum and coach Donny Fuller were supervising 200 students on outside lunch duty, when *tornadic* winds aburptly engulfed the high school.

“I looked up and I saw debris circling one way and then, all of a sudden, it started going the other way. I thought, ‘Uh, oh, get them (the students) inside,'” Fuller said.

The coaches shuttled the startled students into the main school building.

“The teachers did well in getting the students back inside,” Price said.

But not after some anxious seconds.

“My boyfriend got hit by a trash can,” said 15-year-old Amber Jenkins. “I just started running, trying to get under the roof thing.”

Colby Kaufman, 16, was also outside.

“I was outside, having lunch, and then some lunch wrappers hit me in my face,” Kaufman said. “Then I saw some of the roof shingles coming at me.”

“I saw my lunch just fly away and then all this stuff was just flying around, I thought it was Katrina all over again,” said Derrick White.

Warren Central assistant principal Chris Perritt gave a brief assessment of the damage.

“One of the sky lights came down and hit on top of one of the buildings. Some AC units got moved on their sides and there was some roof damage both on top of the auditorium and in Building B.

Dr. Price said school officials had little warning.

“This thing came really sudden. I was at lunch and just in a few minutes, all this wind came in.”

Four houses were heavily damaged in the Timberlane subdivision, which is off the south end of Halls Ferry Road.

Valley Park in Issaquena County also received heavy damage. A long-time Valley Park resident, Ralph Frisbee, said high winds ripped up aluminum shed on his property he uses to cover his airplane. “Oh, it’s hurt all right,” he said.

At Eagle Lake, Jack Branning, an Issaquena County resident, said he was visiting a friend when the storms came through.

“I’m 76 years old,” Branning said, “and I’ve never seen a wind that has come on that fast and that strong.”

He said he saw four mobile homes on Pecan Wood Drive crushed by uprooted trees.

Beverly Connelly, executive director of the Vicksburg Chapter of the Red Cross, said four families at Confederate Ridge Apartments on U.S. 61 North had damage and were hoping to take shelter at Calvary Baptist Church on Warriors Trail, which had been opened Wednesday for about 10 people from northwest Vicksburg, where rising floodwaters had forced them to evacuate.

The newest problem, Connelly said, was the shelter was not accessible late Friday because of downed trees and limbs and it was without electric power.

She said the shelter, when operational, could hold 50 to 70 evacuees.

The National Weather Service late Friday was forecasting clear skies until Sunday night for Central Mississippi.

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