You see the pictures of tornado damage on TV, but it doesn’t do them
justice. Yazoo City was one of the areas hardest hit by the deadly
tornado that tore through the region Saturday. We were able to drive down one street with some of the worst damage. It is severe and extensive. House after house is missing a roof, windows or walls. Crunched cars are scattered along the road, lifted and moved several feet from where they were parked by their owners. Huge old trees are uprooted or snapped.
And it goes on like this. We turned around after about a mile.
We met Joe Martin just as he was coming back to his childhood home.
Martin wasn’t in the home at the time of the storm and was seeing the
damage for the first time. The home is a total loss. Martin’s father
has built it just after he returned from World War Two. Martin was ten
at the time and remembers helping him build the house. Martin’s mother
planted azaleas out front- all gone now from the storm. So are the
trees that stood there for decades. Martin says they won’t rebuild.
There’s no replacement for that house.
They say there are hundreds of people without homes today in
Mississippi. Take one look at one street in Yazoo City and it’s easy
to understand why.
