Covington County Emergency Manager Greg Sanford now has a clearer idea of the Easter storms that pounded rolled through Collins and divided the county into three pieces.
“That’ one way of putting it – it’s absolutely awful how much devastation it is,” he said. “We don’t have a figure yet on the number of houses and structures that were affected, but it’s going to be pretty large.”
Covington County felt the effect of two tornadoes on Easter Sunday, an EF4 twister south of Collins that became the largest in the state’s history and an EF3 tornado that went north of the county seat. No one was injured.
The EF4 tornado that killed four people in Bassfield was two miles wide (the largest in the state’s history) and traveled 67.8 miles with winds of more than 170 mph. It lasted 77 minutes as it veered south of Collins and ended in Pachuta.
The EF3 tornado traveled on a 1-mile-wide path for more than 82 miles from Lawrence County to Jasper County. It traveled north of Collins on its path of destruction.
Sanford said the county received damages in different areas.
“It’s scattered out; it’s very hard to tell (about the amount of destruction),” he said. “There are several areas. It tracked all the way across the county, so it affected a lot of people.”
The number of people who came to help Covington County residents was a welcome sight, Sanford said.
“There have been a lot of people who have helped out,” he said. "The Mississippi Highway Patrol came up here and helped out on patrolling and making sure everything was secure. They made sure some bystanders didn’t get into other people’s property and were just trying to control traffic. A lot of people just wanted to see how much damage was done, but it was not the time for getting in the way. There’s a better time than 30 minutes after.”
Sanford, along with other state, county and federal officials, toured the damage sites on Tuesday, April 14 with Gov. Tate Reeves.
“We hope to have better numbers in the next few days,” he said. “I have two teams doing damage assessment now, and I have four more teams coming in tomorrow, so we will see what it’s going to be. I imagine it’s going to be pretty high.”