Relief organizations begin providing food, essentials to rural southern Mississippi

According to the most recent updateprovided by the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency, as many as 18 tornadoes of varying duration and intensity touched down across Mississippi between March 14 and 15, destroying 131 homes and causing major damage to another 160. 

That’s in addition to seven deaths statewide, including four in Walthall County, near the Louisiana border, which is currently reporting 182 homes and 6 farms destroyed by the storms. 

A preliminary report published by the National Weather Service, Jackson office, says the most destructive tornado traveled a total of 65 miles from northern Louisiana into southern Mississippi, cutting a path just north of Tylertown with winds estimated to have peaked at 170 miles per hour.  

Rated an EF-4, the second most severe rating on the Enhanced Fujita Scale, that tornado blew right through the small town of Salem, about 9 miles north of Tylertown. 

At the Salem Baptist Church, a white steeple that stood for decades remains toppled on the apex of the sanctuary’s roof, a symbol of a definite before and after in the tight-knit farming community. 

Out front, utility crews work to reconnect electrical wires that have dangled over the busy, regional thoroughfare, highway 27, since Saturday afternoon. 

But in the church’s kitchen, more than two dozen volunteers working with the faith-based, nonprofit relief organization Mercy Chefs are taking recovery into their own hands. 

Most of the volunteers were impacted by the two tornadoes that struck the region, but only days later are working an assembly line of food prep that’s providing hundreds of hot meals to residents in the region who were impacted by the tornadoes.

On their second full day on the ground in southwest Mississippi, the group expects to distribute roughly 3,000 meals. 

“We're producing the food in our outdoor mobile kitchens, and then we come inside to keep it out of the elements; we plate it up, and then we have different distribution people who are taking it out into the community,” said Lisa Saylor, director of disaster relief and long-term recovery at Mercy Chefs.

“We're always a little bit generous with the environment that we're in. We look at the population and what might be their normal eating standards and what says, ‘I'm at home’ to them. And then we cater our menus to that, to the region and what might feel like extra love in that area.” 

Across a small parking lot from the church, in the bus line at Salem High School, local residents pull into a drive thru line to pick up hot meals, bottled water, and hygienic supplies – many in the region are still without power and running water. 

Charles Boyd, a lifelong Salem resident who served as principal of the high school for nearly 50 years before retiring, was one of the first in line on March 18. He lost his entire house to the tornado, as well as most of the fencing running the edge of his pasture land. 

“I was there when somebody called and told me it was heading my way, so I got in the bathroom and it completely destroyed my house. It’s just the will of God that I’m here today,” he said. 

But he says it’s too early to decide whether he’ll rebuild his home.  

“I’ve lost so much, I just don’t know. And I’ve got such a mess over there that I don’t even know where to start.”