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DPCC aids Yazoo City recovery
It was a first for Yazoo City – that’s what Bernice McGinnis remembers. “We’ve had tornados before and they did some damage, but nothing of this magnitude. Nothing! Ever!” McGinnis has been the Yazoo County Emergency Management Director for eight years and she was prepared for the worst that Saturday, but hoped it wouldn’t happen.
McGinnis and administrative assistant, David Brown, were in the courthouse the morning of April 24. McGinnis had been there all night and Brown came that morning. “We were in constant contact with the weather service,” McGinnis recalled. “We knew the storm was going to hit us.” But what worried McGinnis, who is also the 911 Coordinator, were the words used by the weather service to describe it. “They used words we were not accustomed to hearing, like, ‘tornado emergency’ and ‘extremely dangerous.’ They used those a lot,” she said.
The tornado struck Yazoo City a few hours later, just after 12 p.m., and its 160 mph winds left a wide path of destruction.
John Deal, Atmos Energy Operations Supervisor for the area, was vacationing in Arkansas when he got a call from Atmos gas control that a tornado hit Yazoo City. “Needless to say, I left immediately,” he said. Deal arrived about four hours later and found a lot of damage, but he also found an amazing amount of cooperation. “You could already see our people taking charge and going about trying to recover and helping each other – unselfishly. The overall community involvement and support was just pretty overwhelming,” he said. “No, it was very overwhelming.”
“The first thing you deal with is the fact that it has happened,” McGinnis said. “Then you have to find a way to do all you can to help the people.” Her role in emergency response has taken her to other places in the state to help with disaster recovery, but this time it was different. “I’ll always remember my first view of Old Benton Road,” she said. “It looked like a war zone. I have friends who live on that road. Yes, this time it was different – this time it was personal.” The faces she saw were the faces of friends and those she spoke to in the grocery store every week. “They weren’t the smiling faces I remembered,” she said. “They were crying and pleading for help. It was very, very personal.”
Deal said that none of them could stop long enough to dwell on the personal issues. “We all had other responsibilities that had to take priority.” Brown was a good example. His first step was to get the emergency shelter ready even though he couldn’t reach his daughter and granddaughters by phone. It wasn’t until later that he learned they were safe. “It was the same with the police, firemen, everyone,” McGinnis said. “We were all worried about our families, but we had a job to do.”
(left to right) David Brown, Bernice McGinnis, and John Deal meet in the Yazoo County Courthouse
“Enough cannot be said about Mississippi 811 and the response, support, and attention that was given by the staff,” Deal said. “Not just in providing the means of getting locate requests out, but their visibility here. Anything they were asked to do, they did and did quickly.”
Deal knew Atmos would be overwhelmed with locate requests and “our first came in at 1:30 a.m. Sunday morning,” he said. “It was for five miles of line.” UtiliQuest provides utility line locating services for Entergy and AT&T in the area, but Atmos does its own locating in Yazoo City. After a call to Jackson for help, a solution was found and Bo Womack, Director of Gulf States for UtiliQuest, made it easy.
“Getting UtiliQuest to help us was a good match,” Deal said. “They locate for Atmos in Jackson and, without hesitation, agreed to help us in Yazoo City; for the next ten days they did all our locates. They did an outstanding job and we’ve invited Bo to speak at our next (DPCC) meeting.”
McGinnis and Deal give credit to their local Mississippi 811 DPCC as a key element in the success of the recovery. “None of us were strangers,” McGinnis said. “Most that came to the recovery briefings were members of our group. We already knew each other and getting the work completed was easier because we could just say what needed to be said and do what needed to be done.”
“Because of the cooperation and utilization of Mississippi 811, third-party damages during the recovery process have been held to a relatively small number,” Deal said. And that, he added, “was totally the result of the local DPCC.”
“I encourage all stakeholders to either start a group or support the group that is already in place,” Deal said. “The relationship building is critical, not just in disasters like this, but in ongoing, daily operations. It’s so vitally important.”
McGinnis, Deal, and Brown are very appreciative of the assistance and support given to them by the organizations and people of Mississippi and other states. “We humbly and sincerely thank them for their help.”
Although the destruction is very apparent today, the recovery process is moving forward. It will take a lot more time to complete the rebuilding, but it will take more than time for the citizens of Yazoo City to heal from the loss of those that were so precious to them.
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