VIDEO: Fighting The Mississippi Heat

COLUMBUS, Miss.(WCBI)—The mercury in Mississippi will continue to climb this summer.

Elderly residents are especially vulnerable to the heat.

“At night the fans did cool the house down, but I needed air during the day when I was going through chemo and radiation, I did need that,” says Columbus resident Grace Pointer.

“It gets hot in there, when we walked in there it was like a sauna,” added family friend, Martha Gordon.

Ms. Grace Pointer has cared for Martha Gordon her whole life, anytime that she was sick. Now, Gordon is ready to take care of the woman who has shown her so much love over the years.

“We went to her home to visit her as church members, me and some more members, and we realized that she didn’t have any air. So, we signed her up with Prairie Opportunity and they were going to do a follow-up and we hadn’t heard from them. So, I called them again this year and they said she was still on the waiting list. She still doesn’t have any air,” Gordon says.

Pointer says summers are always tough, but it feels as though it has been hot all year long.

“It was hot on the 15th of February, it was pretty warm, and that’s when I really got sick this time when I needed air, my oxygen level had dropped and I couldn’t sleep that night so the next morning her son came and picked me up and put me in the car and took me to the emergency room, that’s just how sick and hot I had gotten in that house,” explains Pointer.

After that, Pointer had to move.

“She’s on oxygen 24/7, and she’s a senior citizen and she lives alone, but now she’s with her sister until we try and find some air for her,” says Gordon.

Pointer says most elderly residents, like her, are on a fixed income and can’t afford a large air conditioning unit.

While she feels blessed to have the help she does, Pointer hopes this story will help others.

“They should reach out to the elders because I got three sisters here and all of them have air. See, if I need to go to their house, I have somewhere to go, you have a lot of people who don’t have anywhere to go,” says Pointer.

Prairie Opportunity tells WCBI News that because the program is federally funded, the organization must wait on the money before they can provide any services.

The requests are all on a list, and once the money is there, appointments are met by need.

Categories: Local News

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *