TALLULAH — Witnesses to Saturday’s tornado, which hit residential and industrial areas here before moving across the Mississippi River, counted blessings brightened by family, friends and faith Monday as they spent a second full day assessing damaged homes and businesses and clearing debris.

Gene Frith, 60, of Vicksburg, was one of about 15 workers inside Complex Chemical Co. at the Madison Parish Port late Saturday morning when winds began sending tin and insulation “flying everywhere.”

“That wind just blew me — like there was nothing to it, like I was a piece of paper,” Frith said, recalling the harrowing minute and a half between the automotive fluid plant’s roof tearing off and his body slamming into a wall of equipment lockers.

“I was headed out a middle exit by the lockers. Next thing you know the wind threw me against the lockers, then here comes another set of lockers, then here comes a wall coming to me,” Frith said, sporting abrasions on his face and right arm. “I thought I could move it out the way, but it was too strong for me. Then all of a sudden the wind changed and blew all that away from me. That’s how I got out.”

He compared the Saturday’s storm to the Dec. 5, 1953, tornado that destroyed much of downtown Vicksburg, one he recalls as a 4-year-old waiting in his family’s pickup for his mother’s shift to end at the downtown Sears.

“I still don’t know where my hard hat is — it took off like a jet!” Frith said.

A liquid nitrogen leak at the plant has been contained, but the plant’s west side was pummeled by the lid of a chemical storage tank and several rail cars that tumbled onto their sides. The “wedge tornado” cut a 200-mile path of destruction through Madison Parish and parts of at least six counties in central and north Mississippi, including the Eagle Lake community in Warren County where Sheriff Martin Pace said 11 homes were lost on Sea Island Drive. Dozens more were damaged.

There were no fatalities in Madison Parish or Warren County.

The National Weather Service estimates the tornado reached EF-3 intensity over Eagle Lake, with winds between 130 and 150 mph, then hit EF-4 over Yazoo County, where four of the 10 deaths attributed to the storm were reported. Gov. Haley Barbour had declared a state of emergency for Mississippi counties in the tornado’s path. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has declared Madison Parish a disaster area.

About 70 to 75 plant employees will keep their jobs and essentially work as security guards during regular shifts until inspectors with the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality deem the facility safe to reopen, sales manager Travis Melton said Monday, adding that only three workers being injured was “truly a blessing.”

DEQ estimates a complete safety assessment will take place by Thursday after brake fluid spilled during the storm is removed and an 18,000-gallon propane tank is emptied. Elsewhere at the port, no work stoppages were expected at Terral River Service and Northrup Grumman, which escaped the tornado’s path by a few hundred yards.

Farther west, the dust has settled back onto the Willow Bayou community’s gravel roads amid shards of twisted metal and wooden planks — making up what’s left of the neighborhood’s modest brick homes and double-wide trailers.

Thirteen members of Janice Thornton’s family, including her husband, Billy, and her 91-year-old mother-in-law, Eloyse, found themselves clinging to one another when the storm hit.

“We were all nearly sucked out the hallway,” Thornton said while eating lunch at a shelter established at Willow Bayou Baptist Church, left untouched except for a few missing roof shingles. It quickly became a gathering hub for the community, about six miles northwest of Tallulah. “It sounded like a train that got louder and louder — oh, my gosh, it was terrifying.”

Others described sights of a darkening midday sky.

“It was just like, rain, and then black,” said Carol Frith, who is not related to Gene Frith. She was recovering from surgery and decided to get some rest just after 11 a.m., around the same time the first calls came about a tornado being spotted. “My mattress is by a neighbor’s yard now — wrapped around a tree. I’m just thrilled to be alive.”

Food, water and ice were donated to the shelter by other churches and by the Town of Tallulah, said Pastor Martin Parker.

“Many are out of a job, so it’s quite an economic impact,” said Mayor Eddie Beckwith, who visited the shelter Monday. “(Tallulah proper) wasn’t hit as bad, and we’re thankful for it.”

Jobs picking up metal weren’t hard to come by for members of Delta Mennonite Church, who trekked from Transylvania in East Carroll Parish donning bonnets and flowing, flowery dresses to pick gnarled metal and other debris from farmer Jackie Haddox’s cornfield not far from the chemical plant and the 206-year-old New Morning Star Baptist Church, leveled by the tornado.

“We’re picking up debris for the farmer,” said Cayla Schroeder, 25, a member of the denomination that is known for helping neighbors in times of disaster.

By Monday, Entergy crews and others had restored power to nearly all parish residents, except in Willow Bayou and the chemical plant, said Maj. Neal Horath of the Madison Parish Sheriff’s Office, adding deputies have kept security around affected neighborhoods tight. Only one item, a power drill, was reported missing as a result of homes left unoccupied due to storm damage and has been returned to its owner, Horath said.

About 22 people in Willow Bayou have been assisted at the church shelter by Red Cross volunteers from the organization’s Northeast Louisiana chapter, emergency services director Carroll Babb said.

Contact Danny Barrett Jr. at dbarrett@vicksburgpost.com