Shortly after sunset on Wednesday, a line of severe thunderstorms began spawning tornadoes across the bottom half of Mississippi. The twisters tore through rural communities from Purvis to Bogue Chitto, shredding roofs, tossing cars, and transforming hundreds of homes into heaps of twisted metal and splintered wood.
By Thursday morning, the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency (MEMA) estimated that roughly 500 homes had been damaged across five counties. Scott Simmons, a MEMA spokesperson, said a dozen people were injured at a single trailer park in the small Lincoln County community of Bogue Chitto, part of a statewide tally of at least 17 injuries. National Weather Service meteorologist Daniel Lamb said survey teams had confirmed at least three tornadoes caused significant damage and were assessing whether more had touched down.
In Bogue Chitto, dozens of homes were flattened. Krystal Miller and six others — including infants as young as 4 weeks old — grabbed a Bible and huddled in a hallway as the tornado struck. “We just flipped, and it threw us all out,” Miller told the Associated Press. “It scattered everybody out. … I can’t find the Bible.” Miller said her young son remained in the hospital for monitoring and another child was injured in the face, but she expressed gratitude simply for escaping the trailer that had disintegrated around them. “The trailer is in pieces but we made it out,” she said.
Fifteen-year-old Max Mahaffey was watching TikTok videos with his 59-year-old grandmother when they realized the tornado was bearing down. They ran to the bathroom, but when the roof was torn off, they crawled to the living room and hid under a couch. “You heard screaming, glass breaking, horns honking — everything,” Mahaffey said. Nearby, Dmell Burnes covered his 11-year-old daughter in his arms inside a closet just as the house began to shake. The walls and roof came apart, but the frame around them held. “It was one of the most scariest moments of my life. Me and my daughter were praying,” Burnes said while standing on the rubble of his trailer. “We’re just grateful to be alive.”
In Purvis, Anunciata Schwebel watched helplessly on FaceTime as her friend and tenant slunk into a bathtub to take cover while the storm tore apart the cottages she owned. “We could see a line of people sitting in their tubs,” Schwebel said. “We thought people were dead.” At Coaltown Baptist Church in Purvis, members sang and prayed as they hunkered down in a hallway until the storm passed.
Gov. Tate Reeves posted “Pray for Mississippi” online, announcing that a volunteer rescue group was providing shelter for displaced residents and that MEMA was coordinating the response. Debris from the storms forced the closure of Interstate 55 and many other roads in Lincoln County.
As residents dug through the wreckage recovering jackets, backpacks, and watches, a storm chaser named Ashton Lemley heard a meow from beneath a pile of insulation. After a few minutes of searching, he found a tiny kitten hiding between two wooden posts. “I’ve been in these situations so many times. I don’t try to get overly emotional,” Lemley said. “But it is very heartbreaking to see any type of animal or human go through something like that.”
Alisha Marbury stood teary-eyed in the wreckage of Bogue Chitto but counted her community blessed. “God spared us,” Marbury said. “Houses and homes and cars and stuff are replaceable, but your life ain’t.” The outbreak echoed a similar burst of severe weather last month that saw tornadoes tear through the state without claiming any lives, a testament to the early warning systems and the resilience of rural communities bracing for the peak of the spring storm season.