Jones County Emergency Management Agency Executive Director Paul Sheffield said early Tuesday morning that actual damage assessment in the wake of Monday night’s tornadoes and storms would begin Tuesday morning. Wednesday afternoon, Sheffield reported that there were approximately 208 homes with various degrees of damage in the Laurel-Jones County area. The damage assessed of the 208 homes includes 60 affected, 87 with minor damage, 50 with major damage, and 11 destroyed. Sheffield said that according to the National Weather Service, the tornado that passed through Laurel-Jones County ranked as an EF3 tornado. The path of the tornado began at Hillcrest Drive and Moose Drive and continued on a northeasterly path to Clarke County, touching down sporadically.
Damage in Laurel could be found at Piggly Wiggly on 16th Avenue and a couple of blocks behind there on 15th Avenue and 14th Avenue. McAllister’s received damage, and one can follow the tree-downed path through the historic district on to the old campus of the Laurel Magnet School on MLK Blvd. The roof of the school was blown off and the debris thrown into the large Mississippi Power substation. The neighborhood around the school on Joe Wheeler Avenue and 14th Street received heavy damage as well.
“It was scary,” exclaimed Lorna Stubbs, who lives on the corner of 14th Street and Joe Wheeler with her husband, Bobby. “We watched the wind twirling and then suddenly there was a loud popping sound.” That popping sound may have been coming from the power substation near the school. She added that the trees in her yard fell on top of both their vehicles.
At Gardner Park and the Laurel School District offices, which are located in the old Gardiner High School, there were more than eight trees uprooted in the park. One can definitely notice a change in the landscape around the old GHS building.
The path of damage and destruction continued on across I-59 to Highway 11. One of the first calls for help to the Jones County Volunteer Fire Service went out to Sandersville for a family trapped in their home at Ross Johnson Road, which is located at I-59 and Highway 11 south of Sandersville. The next call was for a family trapped in their home on Carl Jones Road, which is located off Magnolia Road. Volunteer fire and rescue units from Sandersville and Powers began to head toward both locations. At both locations there were no injuries. Shortly afterward calls began to come from around Eastview Drive where Wade Services –which designs, manufactures and sells flatbeds, drop decks and multi-axle lowboys – was destroyed.
Then reports of damage came in from East Main Street in Sandersville near the city limits, and more reports quickly followed from Ned Dillard Road, Florence Church Road, Arlee Williams Road, and McFarland Road and around the Bogue Homa Choctaw Indian Reservation. Fire and rescue units from Rustin, Glade, Sharon, Shady Grove and Calhoun began to head toward Sandersville, where Incident Command was established at the Sandersville Volunteer Fire Station. Volunteers from all these departments as well as the citizens of Jones County worked throughout the night clearing trees from roads and checking on residents.
After the storms passed through there were approximately 7,000 to 10,000 Mississippi Power customers without power. As of 4:10 p.m. Wednesday afternoon, December 18, only 25 customers in the Laurel area were without power. Dixie Electric Power Association was reporting only 14 customers in the area without power as of Wednesday afternoon.
“There was a good coordination effort for all responders in the city and the county,” said Sheffield. “The City of Laurel worked diligently, and the Volunteer Fire Departments worked their tails off.”
Sheffield said he is working with his state partners to see if the Laurel-Jones County area will qualify for state assistance.