Drop in donations raising concern at center supplying Rolling Fork residents

Since mid-April, the old gymnasium at South Delta High School in Rolling Fork has been the hub for those dropping off and seeking donations in the form of clothes, food and cleaning supplies. March 24th's EF4 tornado, with winds measuring up to 170 miles-per-hour, displaced as many as 176 families -- but four months later, officials at the donation center say they could run out of food and water to supply residents within the next few days.  

Rebecca Hay, a lifelong Sharkey county resident and operator of the center, says between 70 and 80 residents come to the center each day for supplies -- some multiples times per week. 

“People think we're okay – four months out, you should be okay. But just the number of people we have coming through every day tells me that people aren't okay. They still need help and It's getting sad,” said Hay. “We're out of toilet paper, we're out of paper towels, but I'm concerned about food. What would you do if you had no other option to feed your family? You're going to do whatever you have to do to get food to feed your family.”

As time has passed and the long road to recovery takes shape, donations from church and other community groups have decreased drastically. 

Amid record-setting summer heat, residents drive up to the school and park under a tarp where employees use driver's licenses to verify those in the car are Rolling Fork residents. There, each individual in the car receives a food box, hygiene box and grocery bag full of cleaning supplies from the center’s storage.

Without air conditioning due to damage suffered in the tornado, Hay or one of her 16 employees grab the pre-packaged supplies from stacks placed under basketball hoops, cooled only by a few industrial fans. She says that when previously the center would fill out 2 to 3 donation logs per week, they now only fill one every 2 to 3 weeks. 

In the weeks after the storm, both supply and demand for donated items was so great that the center was open 7 days a week to provide residents with household essentials. Limited by donations, they’re now only open Monday through Friday. 

Last week, Hay says the donation center ran out of food and nearly water until they were saved at the last minute by statewide organization Mississippi Food Network. 

“I pretty much thought we were going to run out, and I started scrambling. I reached out to them on a Wednesday. They said, ‘that’s okay, we have a 53 foot truck coming to you on Friday.’ That's what's left of about 500 [boxes] we got. We got six pallets of food boxes and we're down to two and a half pallets,” she said. 

A week later, Hay says food and now water supplies are critically low, threatening to close the donation center serving residents from both Sharkey and Issaquena Counties – some of the nation’s poorest.  

“We'd have to shut down and there'd be no outlet. But when you stop and think, you have to replace everything you own and you have nowhere to put it. So if I can give people food to get them through the week, that makes it to where they can go buy a bed or buy the kids some new shoes, or to start rebuilding what they had. I don't know what's going to happen if we do run out of food. I don't know,” said Hay. 

Resident James Anderson, who lost several relatives and close friends in the March tornado, says he's been using the center several times a week to feed himself and family who are staying with him temporarily. 

“It’s been a tremendous help to everybody in this community – Issaqueena County, the whole of Sharkey County and here in Rolling Fork. I hope they don’t go anywhere anytime soon, because some folks just don’t have anything,” said Anderson. “I come here a few times a week but I know some people who need to be here every day.”

Another issue concerning Hay and the Sharkey County Emergency Management Agency is how the center will handle increased demand as some of those displaced residents begin moving back to Rolling Fork. 

Many of those households will make use of temporarily rent-free mobile homes provided by both the Federal Emergency Management Agency and MEMA for up to 18 months, but there has been no indication as to whether the rent-free period will be extended. 

That leads Hay to believe many will be faced with the careful balancing act of spending on household repairs, moving costs and supplies for their family well into Rolling Fork’s still-opaque recovery timeline. 

“How can you even envision it? Everything you know is gone. Rolling Fork is a very small town –  I can't give you street names because a lot of the street signs are even gone. People that have been here all their life have to stop and go, ‘now where am I at again?’, said Hay.  

“You don’t realize how dependent you become on landmarks. It used to be ‘oh, I’m going to turn here by John’s house,’ but John’s house isn’t there anymore.” 

Also destroyed in the March tornado were most of Rolling Fork’s businesses, centered around the agricultural hub’s downtown and housed in historic brick buildings. 

While some employees have maintained their employment through temporary work placement programs or transfers, others have been forced to move for jobs in regional towns like Greenville, Vicksburg and Yazoo City, in some cases upending multi-generational families in the historic town. 

Now more than four months later, the current phase of debris cleanup has begun to address the crumbling business district only blocks from the courthouse. 

“If our businesses aren't back and people can't go back to work, then what are people going to do? As my dad would have said, it's as clear as mud,” said Hay. “We're just living day to day and we get through one and wake up the next and say, okay, what's today going to bring? We're going to do it, we just don't know how yet.”