Residents of Southwest Mississippi are picking up the pieces after floodwaters tore through communities along the state border.
On the line between Wilkinson and Amite Counties lays the small town of Crosby. Home to about 300 people, it’s perhaps the Mississippi town hit hardest by last weekend’s flooding.
To assess the damage, crews with the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency are going door to door talking to residents.
"[I've] seen a lot of houses with water damage to them," says Tina Jordan a damage assessor with MEMA. "A lot of underinsured and no insured homes. From the inside, the most I've seen is probably about four feet. On the outside of houses, anywhere from twenty to thirty feet."
"I've been here a long time, but that's the first time water got like that," says 91-year-old Sarah Wigham. She's has lived in Crosby for nearly 70 years. "When I came out here that water was going bicycles and everything you can name was going down that way."
Throughout the town, signs of the flood are everywhere. Fences are knocked down, and trash and debris are strewn about yards. Family possessions lay out in the sun as homeowners take inventory of what they have left.
"Stinky, mold everywhere, the walls cracked, the floors when you walk on them they're wet," says Terrica Bates, she says her home is a total loss. "It's real bad. Muddy, spiders everywhere, might be snakes. It's bad, can't live in it."
But Bates is trying to remain optimistic.
"Pray and pray for better days and take one day at a time. We can rebuild, we can. It's going to take everybody working together as a team."
So far the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency estimates around 71 homes have been damaged by Friday’s flood, but those results are preliminary.
