The Delta Democrat-Times from Greenville, Mississippi • Page 1

Delta Bent orml Greenville, Mississippi 102 Years Monday, Feb. 22, 1971 No. 147 Killer tornadoes slash across Delta Inverness business district blown to shambles UPI Photob jlmwafltins Railroad station, jerked aloft by tornado, sits atop tracks UPI Photo by Jim Watklns Most deaths since 1942 UPI Photo By Michael Verner Youth hobbles through Inverness wreckage From staff and wire reports Search teams dug through the rubble of sharecropper shacks across the flat Mississippi delta cotton country today for more dead in the Deep South's deadliest outbreak of tornadoes in nearly three decades. The confirmed toll from Sunday's storm was 70 dead--64 in Mississippi and 6 in Louisiana. Several persons were missing, and hundreds of persons were injured.

The toll was the worst inflicted by tornadoes in the Deep South since a series of twisters killed 75 persons in central and northeast Mississippi on March 16, 1942. Dozens of communities in the delta, a fertile plain stretching along the Mississippi River from Vicksburg to Memphis, called the National Weather Service in Jackson with tornado reports. A Weather Service spokesman estimated 40 to 50 twisters hit the state late Sunday afternoon. The little cotton-and-soybean towns of Inverness, Cary, Delta City, and Little Yazoo were wrecked. At Inverness, where 13 died, two water towers remained upright among debris that had been the town's business district.

Heavy damage intermittently dotted a 250- mile line stretching from Delhi, in the South through Mississippi's delta up to Selmer, just above the Mississippi line. A tornado alert continued until early this morning in Alabama, Georgia Tennessee, and Florida, and one tornado was reported early today near. Fla. Thousands in the delta, moist.of them blacks, were left homeless. "I ain't got no house," said 67-year-old Jesse Hudson of Delta City who spent the night in a school gymnasium.

"It took it away. It took them all down --wood houses, brick houses, church houses and all." The list of Mississippi dead included 24 in rural Sharkey County which included the towns of Cary, Cameta and Delta City; 13 at Inverness; 22 in Leflore County, 7 at Little Yazoo, 5 in Humphreys County; two at Rome, and two at Bovina. Tennessee Gov. Winfield Dunn was flying over Mississippi when the tornadoes occurred and lightning struck the antenna of his twin-engine plane, forcing it to make an emergency landing at Meridian. His pilot said the plane appeared to be "in a great big ball of fire." Evacuation centers were set up in schools and churches across the delta.

Nearly the entire black population of Inverness was left homeless. Six persons were killed in a small hut near Delhi in northeastern Louisiana where Cleveland Lenore 47, lived with 12 members of his family. A state trooper said Lenore's house was blown across a bayou along with the bodies of a woman and five children. As bulldozers and heavy tractors cleared rubble, the Red Cross set up shelters in Several delta counties. Fifty members of Red Cross disaster relief teams were sent to' Louisiana and more were on the way.

Highway patrolmen have blocked U.S. 61 from Blanton to Cary while fire-fighting teams in white asbestos suits work on leaking chemical and fuel tanks between the two towns. "We can't let you in there," a patrolman told a DD-T reporter- photographer team. "If those things blow, it'll be worse than 10 tornadoes." At Moor head, near Inverness, a city official said homes were "squashed like a tractor had run over them." Four houses were destroyed and 12 persons injured-el Transylvania, and 40 persons were hurt when a tornado damaged a trailer park near Oxford, site of the University of Mississippi. -A Greenwood youth said it "sounded like a roaring train but was shaped like a spinning top.

I've never been so scared of a top in my life." At Inverness, authorities estimated 90 per cent of the business district and three-fourths of the residential area was destroyed with about 200 persons injured. Scores of tornado refugees were taken to nearby Indianola where emergency shelters were hurriedly set up. "It's one hell of a mess," said a civil defense worker. Mrs. Virginia Lytle, head nurse of the Washington County Health Department, said "Previously we've been instructed to not go anywhere until notified by department headquarters in Jackson.

We have not been notified so far. Sanitarians in the counties hit will check out health hazards." Washington County Sheriff J. R. Cloy said deputies Billy Melton, Albert Tackett, Bennie Keith and Isaac Fair helped out in Hollandale, Rolling Fork and Delta City. "They said that Washington County looked in pretty good shape and didn't know of any deaths in the county as of midnight." Arkansas State Police at Dumas reports two tornadoes touched down in the state Sunday, but there were no injuries.

"One of them hit at McGehee and heavily damaged some houses, uprooted trees and tore down power lines, but no one was hurt," the spokesman said. "The other one was in the north part of the state but no one was hurt there either." Lt. Col. S. E.

of Greenville, a National Guard officer, said 50 members of the Greenville unit were called to the Delta City, Rolling Forki, Cary area Sunday night and would be relieved by 50 other members of the unit this afternoon. The guardsmen are mostly directing traffic and handling security, he said. Fleming added that 58 members of the Leland guard unit are also on duty in Continued on page 14 Jobless, homeless, grateful ROLLING FORK (UPD-Charles Conner sat on a small stool cradling his three- month-old daughter in his arms, then jogging her up and down on his knee. She cried and her father explained she just wasn't used to all the bright lights and commotion. Around them, in the school gymnasium that served as their sanctuary, some 30 other persons sprawled on cots and mattresses lined across the floor.

They wrapped in blankets as temperatures continued to plunge during the night. Conner's wife and five more children, ranging up to 12 years of age, were asleep nearby. They had just lived through the worst ordeal of their lives and Conner could not yet quite comprehend just how they did it. The 28-year-old man had been a worker at Belgrade Lumber Company near the Mississippi delta community of Cary. He had lived with his family in the Belgrade Quarter, a row of tiny dwellings used by employes of the lumber yard.

The lumber yard didn't exist anymore. Neither did the Belgrade Quarter. Conner's job was gone too. All disappeared with a tornado which ripped so uninvited into the area Sunday afternoon. But the Conner family was still together and Conner, although he couldn't quite understand how they survived, was grateful.

'There's nothing left. By BILLY G.JAMES CARY (UPI)--Five-year-old John Stamps, a bandage wrapped around his small head, wondered aloud in the confusion that engulfed him: "Where's mama and daddy?" Tears trickled down the cheeks of an older sister, 17-year-old Lois Stamps. "There's nothing left. It's all gone. Everything on that plantation is gone." Another small child stood nearby in mudcaked silence as the tccnaged girl recounted In stunned disbelief her tale of the tornado which ripped into their small wooden frame home Sunday, ripping it apart and scattering the family of 12.

The parents, Isaac and Rosilcc Stamps, were both Injured. "We haven't seen them since. I don't know where they arc," Lois said at a shelter late Sunday night. The Stamps home was ono of many located on the Evnnna Plantation near this small Mississippi Delta community, where a tornajlo dipped down with devastating fury. At least eight persons were killed in the vicinity and many more injured.

It was a sad tale for many families. Seven persons had been in one home of the plantation when the storm hit. Five of them were later found huddling in a nearby dry creek bed, but a mother and her small baby were missing. Authorities and volunteers searched the surrounding area with flashlights. Twenty-year-old Burnell Conner, a farmhand of the plantation, said "After it hit hi're it looked like it just branched apart." "I saw it coming," said a younger brotlier, 16-year-old Arthur Conner.

"I told everybody to hang onto some big chairs so if the walls of the house fcjl it didn't fall on us. Then everybody started hollering 'here conies a You could feel the pressure, It made your cars pop," Burnell said It sounded like a train but also hnd a "little whistle." The brothers were not Injured, but thjjjr mother and father received body cuts. Rufus Gore of nearby Rolling Fork was visiting his girlfriend, Mildred Dunn, when the twister struck. "I was trying to open the windows to get some air inside when it went over," he said. He was not injured.

Mrs. Dunn and her three small children ran and fell into a ditch near U.S. Highway 61. "I don't see how we're alive," she said. Several small empty butane tanks were hurled into some larger butane and amonla tanks and authorities were clearing the area because of the threat of an explosion.

The odor of ammonia and butane filled the air. Hospitals in the area admitted the seriously injured while temporary emergency shelters were set up in gymnasiums, cafeterias, and any other facilities available to take care of the homeless and less seriously Injured. "We were fortunate to get out," he said. "We'll find something else to do. The important thing is that we're all alive." He said the family was just relaxing around the house Sunday afternoon, driven inside by the rain.

Then the twister struck. "I seen it coming but it was too late," the young father said. "We couldn't get out of the house. We were just sitting on the couch. All of a sudden it got quiet.

I went to the window. It was black. I saw it coming." He said as the storm hit he could see gas escaping from butane and ammonia tanks about a fourth of a mile away. "I got real scared," he said. "At first it was real quiet.

Then it sounded like a lot of trains was coming. I just said to myself this is the end. I was just going to try to save the children." He said he grabbed his wife and kids, put them on a bed and covered them with blankets. "I could see the middle room was falling down on us but I just held the children under the cover. It's a miracle.

Only my wife, Lavenia, was injured. She just got a cut on her leg. We lost everything. I lost my car, my house. It wiped us out.

I don't know what I'll do." A brother-in-law, Dan Walter, who lived next door to Conner, suffered a broken shoulder when his house caved In against the Conner dwelling. Charles Lee Walter was also In Dan Walter's house. He suffered a deep gash on his left elbow, His wife was hospitalized, he thinks at Greenville. "I don't know exactly where," he said. "It wiped me out too." 4 MISS.

INVERNESS ROLLING FORK JACKSON.