The depth of the destruction is immense. Standing on U.S. Highway 61,
the debris field extends as far as the eye can see.
Crisis and Resilience: SPLC's Mississippi office works to help
victims of devastating tornado
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Dwayne Fatheree Read the full piece here
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Friend,
James Ray has been busy over the last couple of weeks.
The house on Front Street in Silver City, Mississippi, that his father
left him 18 years ago is still a shambles. Pieces of tin roofing curl
up toward the sky where the winds from an EF4 tornado tried to rip
them from the joists. In many places the wind won, leaving the bare
timbers open to the sky and the house defenseless against the
elements.
On this particular day, just over two weeks after the March 24-25
tornado traced a path of destruction from nearby Rolling Fork through
Silver City and across the Yazoo River, Ray is tearing down the
remnants of a shed, the remaining two-by-fours of its walls nailed to
two pilings standing upright about 6 feet out of the ground.
"I just keep working," Ray said. "It's got to
get done."
The unsaid part of that is "by me." Although the
destruction the tornado wreaked along the 170-mile path dominated
media last month, the help needed to recover has been slow in
arriving.
"These are the two poorest counties [Sharkey and Humphreys,
where the bulk of the damage occurred] in the state of Mississippi,
which is the poorest state in the country," said Rob Gaudet, a
site coordinator operating a recovery center in Rolling Fork for the
nonprofit Cajun Navy relief organization. "So that makes these
the poorest counties in the United States. It's a real problem,
and Americans aren't paying attention to it."
Waikinya Clanton
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, the Mississippi state office director for the Southern Poverty Law
Center, said that is not a surprise.
"I think that is a common thing, right?" Clanton said.
"The news cycle is predicated on the news of the day.
Unfortunately, here in America we are subject to a number of different
things. While we were working on the recovery in Rolling Fork, there
was another tornado that cut across the South in Little Rock,
Arkansas. Sometimes the attention does shift depending on what is
happening in the world."
Staffers from the SPLC's Mississippi state office have been on
the ground in the tornado-torn area since day one, helping to bring
resources and support to the Delta region in the aftermath of the
storm - including funding, supplies, organizational help and
direct assistance to families and local governments in the
tornado's path.
An ongoing crisis
On this day, Red Cross volunteers and vehicles can be seen
crisscrossing the streets in Rolling Fork, bringing water and aid to
people who are trying to recover what they can and repair damaged
homes. Contractors are hauling load after load of debris to dump
sites, clearing away tons of fallen trees, bricks, lumber and other
pieces of neighborhood homes crushed in the storm.
But the depth of the destruction is immense. Standing on U.S. Highway
61, which bifurcates the town, the debris field extends as far as the
eye can see in every direction.
Read More
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Sincerely,
Your friends at the Southern Poverty Law Center
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working in partnership with communities to dismantle white supremacy,
strengthen intersectional movements, and advance the human rights of
all people.
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