Ice Storms

On the night of February 9th, 1994, an ice storm swept across northern Mississippi with little warning. residents in the Delta could only watch as ice accumulated overnight. “I'm sure she dropped down to freezing, and we were getting a lot of heavy rain, and it started sticking to the trees pretty quick.” “You can hear tree limbs falling, hear the crackling, and you got up the next morning and was like, oh my gosh, like a war zone.” Falling trees and Powerlines made roads like these completely impassable. As a volunteer first responder, it was David Burford's job to clear roads for emergency vehicles. “And they sent us up to North Lake Ferguson Road. There was an elderly couple in there that needed to get out and get to the hospital, and we cut down about a half a mile of road. And then had to turn around and cut to half a mile back out to get him out. So, at that point in time was when they called that operation off because it was late night, early morning hours, I believe, and it was just getting so bad it was it was getting too dangerous for anybody to be out there, really.” The storm would cause 300 million dollars in damages, the most costly natural disaster in state history up until Hurricane Katrina in 2005. 200,000 homes lost power many also lost water. “All at once, there was like a line, no lights, and you really were just creepy driving along Highway 61 in the dark absolutely. No lights whatsoever” “We focused on restoring power to emergency facilities such as hospitals the police departments, getting power back to our water systems that was critical. And we would work basically 16 hours a day, trying to restore as many lights to as many customers as possible.” Despite the best efforts, some rural communities had to survive without power for days and even weeks. “A lot of good stories about neighbors getting together. they would get a generator, and they would take it from house to house and run it for a half a day to keep the food food frozen in the freezer. And neighborhoods would get together and have cookouts at night to cook the stuff that was gonna spoil.” “20 years later, I still see parts of the landscape that have not recovered, but the great thing is I'm reminded of how, as a community, we came together; that spirit came through.” Reporting in Greenville, I'm Lucy Biggers.