Buildings, Homes Demolished Beyond Recognition In Rolling Fork, MS Following Violent Tornado

Good morning to you indeed and that wind is dying down as the sun comes up and sort of breaking up. I think that energy but that weather that came in last night created a lot of difficulty here. There is mud. It is very wet. As you see, this is a crepe Myrtle tree that is ripped up, lying on the boards and nails mid bricks everywhere. Bricks. This is what an EF four tornado can take down the sides of sturdy structures.

166 mile an hour plus winds. And you look at this, this slab right here with the shards of glass all over here this morning. Maybe you can even hear them. You hear this is the disaster. Volunteers yesterday we watched them clean up the slate here. This was full of rubble. Now this morning it is clean.

Perhaps some semblance of hope for a new future. And in the distance, you see oak trees and other trees collapse the root balls taken out of the earth amid the neighborhoods in the distance destroyed huge tractor trailer trucks on top of each other over there that will try to show you again later this morning. And officials are on the ground. FEMA Red Cross, Emeritus Purse and other eight organizations and volunteers. And then the governor, Governor Tate Reeves, who I spoke to live yesterday, also just spoke to Fox News live on air. Let's listen to what his new updates are if we can. There's really two emotions that hit me personally and hit the people in these communities.

The first emotion is one of heartbreak, just absolute loss of life. These are close nips, small communities where everyone's family or a friend. And so those who lost their life are known by everyone in the community. So they're certainly heartbreak. But there's also a sense of resiliency and a sense of optimism for the future. And when these things have so much devastation and in our state, there is a lot of devastation. People show up from all over the state of Mississippi and people show up from all over America to provide help.

And it gives you optimism for the future. And so it's a it's a wide range of emotions going on here right now. And I have to say that wide range of emotions goes from the shock of what occurred if you survived it. If you came out of your closet or bathtub to see all of this, if you've lost a family or a friend, if you realize that your town is 100% gone, and then the shock wears off and the trauma sets in and all the things that run through your head as to how am I going to have shelter? How am I going to have money? Where are my kids going to deal with this in school? Everything. And then you've got all of this. This incredible disaster in the mud that is created again that just adds insult to injury. And the governor trying obviously his best to make sure that people have his confidence and FEMA here and the projectiles, the missiles that are created by the winds of an EF four.

This is just a nasty moment. Just 72 hours, less than 72 hours since this storm came in. So much work to be done as we are beginning to hear the sounds of four wheels, four wheelers roll through here and chainsaws in the distance and people trying to make sense out of everything they just lost. Brita and Robert, you know, that was part of the conversations that you and I were having on Fox weather first and something that I think is so important to bring up is try and put yourself in someone's shoes that is from Rolling Fork. I mean, just getting through today is hard enough. Let's say you're a parent, you have some kids, you went through this experience just getting through sun up to sun down is hard enough. And then you have to take on the fact that you need to take advantage of this FEMA money because that's how you were going to move forward.

Talk a little bit about what FEMA is going to do to help residents through that process because it is daunting. It is a lot to really realize that you have to figure out how to fill out this paperwork. How am I actually going to get this money into my pocket so I can rebuild my house and make a home for my family? It is a process that they're going to have to go through to get FEMA money. I talked to the FEMA administrator yesterday live and, you know, she explained that they are going door to door. But yet, you know, where's your door? You don't have a house. So I'm not sure what you meant by that, but they are setting up areas where people tense that people can go and start the process of showing their identification, explaining what they have and taking pictures if they have a phone of the destruction and beginning that. Can it happen fast enough? No.

Uh, it's not going to. That's the reality. And if you don't have an ID, to be honest with you, you know, the governor did tell me yesterday that that's going to complicate the process. And so what do you do if you don't have that? The question is huge for these people. So what they're going to have to do is go to contact their local officials, find proof of who they are, some sort of registration, whether it be online with the city or the county and then go through that and bring it to the FEMA folks. I mean, can you imagine and you're and then you're going through the stress and the heartache and the anxiety of everything else. Talk about a pile on that is near impossible to figure out how a human being can process.

But that's what they have to do right now. It's not easy and they're going to need a lot of tender touch from our government officials to try and understand what these people are going through. And that's when you find the pure strength of humanity, Robert, and it's so important that, you know, we we come back and we bring back these conversations because six months from now, a year from now, the folks of Rolling Fork are still going to need some help. So we appreciate the insight. We'll check in with you soon. I'm Amy Fries. Welcome to Fox Weather's YouTube page with more great videos on the way.

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