“It’s going to be a long road to recovery, trying to rebuild and get over the devastation,” Wayne Williams, who teaches construction skills at a vocational education centre in Rolling Fork, said as people across town hammered blue tarps onto damaged roofs and used chainsaws to cut fallen trees. Sharkey’s poverty rate is 35 percent, and Humphreys’s is 33 percent, compared with about 19 percent for Mississippi and under 12 percent for the entire country. Two of the counties walloped by the tornado, Sharkey and Humphreys, are among the most sparsely populated in the state with only a few thousand residents in communities scattered across wide expanses of cotton, corn and soybean fields. Mississippi is one of the poorest states in the country, and the majority-Black Delta region has long been one of the poorest parts of Mississippi, a place where many people work paycheck to paycheck in jobs tied to agriculture. “The character and generosity of Mississippians is on full display with the countless volunteers and donations being offered.”īut many people across the state face an uncertain future. “Thankful to our federal partners for being here on the ground to see the impact of this tornado,” Governor Tate Reeves wrote on Twitter. United States President Joe Biden approved a disaster declaration for Mississippi on Sunday, freeing up federal assistance to help communities rebuild.

The character and generosity of Mississippians is on full display with the countless volunteers and donations being offered. Thankful to our federal partners for being here on the ground to see the impact of this tornado. The devastation here in Rolling Fork is heartbreaking. “My community is gone,” Mayor Eldridge Walker told CNN. Search and rescue workers on Sunday surveyed the damage of shredded homes, flattened buildings and smashed cars in Rolling Fork, which was destroyed in the storm. “I’m not going to get depressed about it.” It’s nothing,” said Berry, who works as a supervisor at a catfish-growing and -processing operation. She said she is grateful she and her children are still alive. Berry, 46, shook her head as she looked at the remains of their material possessions.

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