Nearly two weeks after an ice storm knocked out power across parts of northern Mississippi, many families said they remain stuck in the aftermath with damaged infrastructure and incomplete restoration. In Oxford, rural neighborhoods still faced hazards left by ice-coated trees that snapped and brought down lines, and residents described making do with limited heat and water while electricity stayed out. In the meantime, recovery work continued on roads and properties where tree limbs and ice remained scattered in shaded areas.
Barbara Bishop, 79, said the storm left her still struggling to restore electricity at her home nearly two weeks later. Bishop and her 85-year-old husband, George Bishop, live in a rural area near Oxford where ice-coated trees broke and power lines fell, leaving roads nearly impassable. After the storm hit, the couple took in their son, granddaughter and two additional children after those relatives’ homes lost both power and water. For days, they endured bitter cold with only a gas heater for warmth, and for a few days they also lost water, Bishop said.
Bishop described the long stretch as “just been one of those times you just have to grit, grit your teeth and bare it,” according to the Associated Press. Across town, Russ Jones and his wife said they also had no electricity or water, and they relied on improvised steps to handle basic needs. Jones said for days they used five-gallon buckets filled with water to flush toilets, cooked on a gas stove and stayed warm by their fireplace before beginning to stay with friends who had power a few days ago.
On Friday, PowerOutage.us, which tracks outages nationwide, reported that nearly 20,000 customers remained without power in northern Mississippi. The count represented a drop from about 180,000 homes and businesses without power in Mississippi shortly after the storm struck late last month. Lafayette County, where Oxford is located, had the most remaining outages with about 4,200 customers without power, followed by Tippah County with about 3,500. Panola, Yalobusha and Tishomingo counties each had more than 2,000 customers without power.
Conditions in Oxford improved in some ways by Friday as temperatures reached 70 degrees, but ice still lingered on the ground in shaded areas. Downed trees had been gathered into large piles along some roads, and some were burned and still smoldering, the report said. Even as much of the worst damage had been cleared, in some places power lines still hung low over roads and were strewn about in parking lots, with tree limbs still dangling precariously.
The cleanup effort also extended to neighbors and community-led response, according to the report. Across the street from the Bishops, volunteers from the nonprofit Eight Days of Hope arrived days after the storm and worked to clear snapped tree limbs and haul away a large tree that had fallen in Russ Jones’ backyard. The organization said its work includes helping homeowners clean up yards and patch damaged roofs, and it also serves more than 16,000 free meals. Jones said he felt relief that one less task remained as volunteers gave him a free T-shirt and a blanket for his wife; he described the moment as “It’s just beyond anything I could ever imagine.”