Amory residents band together after devastating tornado

Help comes from across the region and state

AMORY, MISS. (WCBI)  –  The people of Amory have come together following the catastrophic tornado that ripped through the Monroe County community Friday night.

   A war zone. That best describes a vast swath of Amory following a tornado that swept across the state. Trees were down everywhere, and that meant the familiar sounds of chainsaws. Amory Mayor Corey  Glenn says about 40% of the community was heavily damaged.

“It is catastrophic as you can see there behind you at this time we’ve not identified any casualties in Amory. We do know on a periphery out in the county we do have some potential casualties out there in a small way, a  couple maybe three and ones too may obviously, they’re family members and certainly, our heart goes out to those people,” Mayor Glenn said.

While human suffering was thankfully low, the same cannot be said for the property. Power lines were down everywhere, and many trees were uprooted. Willie Lopez and his family were forced to hunker down.

 “About 11 O’Clock I told my wife to get some pillows and blankets and stuff to put into the bathroom. And we got our dogs, three dogs, my wife, her son, a new baby. We just got in the bathroom,” Lopez said.

“It was scary. We had dogs barking our little daughter crying. We heard debris hitting all around us and stuff like that. So it was really scary,” he said.

Rene Hankins’ house sustained heavy damage.

“Well, I wasn’t here thank goodness. My roommate was here and she was in the bathroom. And so she was okay and it was just loud noises she said and snapping. Pretty much everything on my house this side is destroyed,” Hankins said.

And the devastation wiped out Amory High School’s Baseball, Softball, and football fields.

 The defending 3A baseball champion Amory Panthers no longer have a field to defend their title on. In fact they had to dig through the rubble to recover the state championship trophy.

 As you can see our athletic facilities are in bad shape. I figure we’ll probably be playing our games on the road for the rest of the year,” said Amory Supt. Brian Jones.

And the high school itself sustained some roof damage leaving it unclear as to whether students can return to class on Monday.

“Of the town of north part of Amory is no power. No water. So that’s another factor that we’ve got to deal with to, so we’ll just examine where we are and figure out when we can get our students back,” Jones said.

“We just ask the surrounding communities to keep us in your thoughts and prayers. And there’s a lot of people here that are suffering. There are a lot of people that are going to be in need. There’s a time to come in and help. Right now is not necessarily the time still in an assessment phase. It is a little bit dangerous still here right now. But in the coming days we certainly solicit people to come and help us out,” Mayor Glenn said.