Clay County braces for second wave of severe weather one week after tornado

WEST POINT, Miss. (WCBI) – Before they can even finish assessing the damage left by the recent tornado, people in Clay County have to start preparing for more severe weather on Wednesday.

But now they have just days to make the repairs they can before the second wave of severe weather hits the area.

“It took us 10 years to build it up and 30 seconds and it’s gone,” says Lynda Koch, whose horse farm was hit hard during the EF-1 tornado. “I haven’t even wrapped my head all the way around it yet.”

Lynda and her husband Robert say it’s an overwhelming feeling having to walk through the wreckage left by the tornado at their West Point farm.

“We lost our big barn and the small barn has damage, and pretty much we lost every fence on the property,” Lynda says.

It is the same for many people across Clay County.

“We lost three utility sheds and that barn there,” says farm owner Wes Williamson. “They were all full of our stuff that has been blown from here to half a mile from here.”

Lynda and Robert estimate the tornado did between $30,000 to $40,000 worth of damage. They say that most of this debris will still be here when Wednesday’s storms arrive.

“All the huge trees that are already down and all the big debris there, we really need bulldozers for that,” Lynda says. “And they have to wait until the insurance gives us okay.”

With the threat of damaging wind and tornadoes looming, residents in West Point are trying to salvage and secure what they can.

“We’re getting a tarp today,” Williamson says. “We had two of the trees fall towards the house. One of them went into the house a little bit, but there’s not too much damage to the house, thank goodness.”

“We’ve been sorting through and bringing lots of the mobile stuff in so it doesn’t fly off when the next storm comes through,” Lynda says.

Williamson is working to repair the only barn he has left standing so that they have somewhere for their horses and chickens to take shelter.

“There’s one corner of the barn there that didn’t get affected, and we’re going to try to get it fixed for them,” he says.

The Koch’s say while they believe their home avoided major damage, they still don’t have a complete picture of the damage.

“There is some issue with the house because it got lifted up and sent back down,” Robert says.

“We don’t know yet if our house is 100% or not,” Lynda says.