Dozens of families in Central Mississippi's, Brandon and Pearl communities are trying to repair their lives. MPB's Lawayne Childrey reports how this week’s rash of violent storms impacted the area.
Cleanup efforts are in full swing on Overby Street in Brandon. That's just one of the many blocks where dozens of homes in the community were severely damaged by this week’s storms. Kenneth Langley says he and his wife, Sherry got out of harm’s way just in the nick of time.
"I was watching the radar on TV and when it went into Byron and it hit Ridgeland, got on 49 I knew then it was time to go cause I knew it was coming straight to Brandon. And we got in the car and went up here to a shelter in town. And when we got home this is what we found."
The Langley say what they returned home to was devastation.
The big oak tree in my back yard as you can see when you come up is on my house. It was leaking inside, a lot of debris, power lines all in the highway, poles broke down in the street. You know it's just everywhere."
Just up the road, 26 year old Kenneth Owens and his girlfriend are thankful to be alive after a deadly tornado turned their home upside down at a trailer park in Pearl.
"The floor to the trailer was on top of us. When we climbed out we were actually on top of the vehicles in our driveway. I had a couple of gashes on my leg, I had to get about 30 stitches because I went through the front door and then she fell on top of me and then everything else came down around us. She actually had a minor cut on her head. They actually had to put after a tornaa couple of staples in but we are both ok."
Tim Sarrett is Captain of the Pearl Police Department.
"If the track would have been 4 or 5 hundred yards south of where it went over it would have affected the Mississippi State Hospital, several other neighborhoods, the majority of this trailer park, so the Lord was with us."
While cleanup and restoration of the area are moving swiftly. Experts say it could take years for the emotional scars to heal. Lawayne Childrey, MPB News.
