Video: Winston County Storm Damage

WINSTON COUNTY, Miss(WCBI)—Tuesday night a rash of storms marched across the Golden Triangle . Today, areas like Noxubee, Oktibbeha and Winston County are left with several homes damaged and many residents displaced.

By the time severe weather hits it’s too late.

“Well we came out and it was about 10 of us that went into the shelter and we closed the door and it came through and it seemed like it was maybe 10 seconds and it was gone,”said Storm Shelter Owner Marie Holdiness.

What seemed like 10 seconds was plenty of time for several Strong cell thunderstorms to rip through the area causing destruction to anything in it’s path.

“We have a storm path that appears to be about 4 to 5 miles long. It’s the bump and skip type. We’ve had a total of 7 homes that have been effected. Some that have been destroyed some damaged along that line path,”said Winston County EMA Director Buddy King.

Hospital administrator Justin Palmer was just wrapping up his day at the office when his phone rang.

“Last night about 5:30 we got the call that one of our employees had lost their house to a tornado so of course we turned right around and headed right here. As you see in the background it’s been completely demolished. So we started getting things out of here last night, save what we could and as you see today we have our staff from John C. Stennis Hospital a part of rush health systems out together being part of a team and helping her out,”said Palmer.

Winston County EMA director Buddy King says the area was only able to escape injury because of education.

” Our continuing efforts on education gave us what we would call a success. It’s hard to look at the damage and says success however this family here had invested in a tornado shelter. There were no lives lost not injuries sustained. These people were in a storm shelter last night. They may have lost their homes and belongings but we did not lose our most valuable assets,” said King.

One thing King really wants to know is why Winston County seems to be a favorite spot for tornadoes.

” I would hope that we could generate some educational research on why this area seems more prone to those storms. That’s one thing I’m looking forward to doing from this day forward and see if we can find why this area has an instance of a higher occurrence of tornado.”

Nanih Waiya is in the process of building a brand new storm shelter facility that’s expected to be open next month.