Chickasaw County residents thankful no one injured after storms slam area

CHICKASAW COUNTY, Miss. (WCBI) – Heavy storms overnight left power outages, downed trees and power lines in parts of Chickasaw County.

Damage throughout Houston and Chickasaw County was evident Monday morning.

At one house, an oak tree, more than 100-years-old, was toppled when the straight-line winds came through. In fact, some of the driveway at the home was still attached to the root system. and even though the damage is bad it could have been a lot worse.

“God had His angels watching after me last night,” said Gloria Clay, who is thankful the oak tree in her front yard was not blown onto her house.

She has lived on Woodland Circle for 35 years and was asleep when the storm hit late Sunday evening.

“My neighbor came over to check on me, he told me what had happened, I didn’t hear a thing,” Clay said.

Not long after the storms passed, neighbors were doing what they could to remove debris from streets and yards.

David Smith is a volunteer with Chickasaw Baptist Disaster Relief.

As he was working in the final hours of Easter Sunday, a volunteer noticed a symbol of hope among the downed tree.

“We were looking at this one, determining what needed to be done and one of our guys, I think Jim Blizzard, said hey you got to watch this, they shined their lights in there, that cross stood right in the midst of that disaster,” Smith said.

“As long as there’s life there’s hope, and even after there’s no life, there’s still hope because of what Jesus did on the cross, it has a wonderful message,” Clay said.

By early afternoon most power had been restored, the cleanup was well underway and neighbors were still checking on each other to make sure everyone was ok.

Four roads were temporarily closed because of storm debris. However, they were all reopened before lunch.

This is the fourth disaster event for Chickasaw County within the past fifteen months.