Clarion-Ledger from Jackson, Mississippi • A8

8A TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2013 CLARIONLEDGER.COM THE CLARION-LEDGER STORM AFTERMATH Tornado Continued from Page 1A cult to do a full assessment. Some 50 roads were closed at one point because of felled trees, downed power lines and debris. About 570 homes and mobile homes were damaged or destroyed, with another 100 apartments left uninhabitable. Several thousand remained without power, though it was expected to be restored to most customers later Monday, Gov. Phil Bryant said.

Bryant said the twister carved a path of destruction roughly 75 miles long, though National Weather Service officials have not yet determined the tornado's exact path or how long it was on the ground. The northeasterly swath cut through the city by the storm severely damaged residences and businesses. In east Hattiesburg, Rufus Hillard was beginning to remove one of two trees that landed on his house at Sixth Avenue and New Orleans Street on Monday morning. Hillard said he saw the tornado approaching and quickly grabbed his wife to run inside. "As soon as we made it to the door, (the tornado) was right on top of us," Hillard said.

"It didn't take but 45 seconds or so to go over us, but it felt like five minutes." Across the street from Hillard's residence, the Eureka School, which is undergoing renovation, had significant damage to its roof. The building was being renovated to house the African American Heritage and Cultural Museum. Some buildings and homes along Mobile and Bouie streets collapsed or were blown away Several landmarks, including the African Amer- A campus officer places a barricade on a street in front of the tornado struck the area late Sunday afternoon, chuck cookap campus of the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg on Monday after a ican Military History Museum, were significantly damaged. The Jamestown area of Hattiesburg took a beating as the storm roared to the south side of the Southern Miss campus, where six buildings were damaged. On Monday, Michael Pierce and his sister-in-law, Carrie Pierce, were digging through the scattered remnants of his parents' home on 34th Avenue.

The home was destroyed, trapping Willie and Carol Pierce in the debris. Michael Pierce, standing in a sodden jacket inside the debris of his parents' home, said he was thankful the storm was not worse. "My parents were actually all sitting inside and got a phone call from a neighbor that the storm was coming," Michael Pierce said. "Before they could hit the hallway, everything just caved in as it hit. My father was able to dig himself out, then my uncle, and my mother, who is in a wheelchair.

It destroyed everything." Just up the street from the Pierce home, Rachel Bayes and her mother, Val Bayes, slogged through mud, carrying pieces of a tree that fell on their house to the street. Rachel Bayes said she and her family were watching television and decided to seek shelter. "We were watching the weather and following the storm on the news. When they showed the tornado on the camera and it stopped, I knew it was going to be bad," she said. EarthLink employee John McGuffey tags a cable Monday in Extinguisher on Main Street in downtown Hattiesburg.

ryan front of Fred's Fire moorehattiesburg American of the damage was slowing officials' assessment. "The problem is, it was so strong that there's so much debris that there's a lot of areas they haven't been able to get to yet," he said. Marion County emergency director Aaron Greer said three injuries had been reported in the community of Pickwick, about seven miles south of Columbia. Two people were taken to hospitals, but the third didn't have the injury examined, he said. Greer said one mobile home was destroyed, three other structures have major damage and several have minor damage.

On Sunday night, John and Katherine Adams were cleaning up around their one-story white Lida Lofton stands in the bedroom of her house at 722 E. Seventh St. Monday as Hattiesburg residents and volunteers start to clean up. bryant hawkinshattiesburg American "I'm kind of past the 'poor I'm going to be all right." said it appears a single me' part of it. This is so Mississippi Emergen- tornado caused the dam-widespread, and it's hap- cy Management Agency age in all three counties, pening in so many places, spokesman Greg Flynn Flynn said the sheer scope Aftermath Continued from Page 7A Monday morning.

She was alone in her one-story brick house when the storm hit Sunday. She heard the tornado coming and dove under a kitchen table. At least three trees hit her house, which she said was also damaged during Hurricane Katrina and another storm in 1998. The fallen trees blocked the front and back doors and a neighbor had to pull the limbs away so she could get out. She had a bruised forehead Monday and some other scratches but was otherwise uninjured.

"I'm lucky, I know that," Key said, fighting back tears as she spoke. Survivors Continued from Page 1A Ramp, who has shepherded the 60-year-old church for the last decade. Across the street and a few houses down, Ellen Chmiel was watching TV in her bedroom. She was going to her friend Eddie Simmons' house later that night, as he was cooking dinner. She decided to go a little early rather than waiting for him to finish cooking before she left.

Directly across the street, USM student Man-dy Bake was having a relaxing afternoon, just getting ready for classes to resume on Monday. On his way back from National Guard drill in Gulf port, Jeff Revette, the pastor of the Living Word Church on Tatum Drive couldn't explain why, but he took a different way home. Instead of taking Edwards Street, he continued up U.S. 49 into Hattiesburg. "It was God telling me I needed to keep going," he said.

Ramp wondered if the weather was too bad to hold the service. Little did he know less than an house where the storm punched holes in the roof, busted windows and completely destroyed the back porch. The couple was at home with their 7-and 3-year-old daughters when the tornado passed next to their house. All through the neighborhood, houses and vehicles were damaged by falling trees. "We're safe, and that's all that matters," said Katherine Adams, 46.

John Adams, who's in the building supply business, said he was surprised to see broken boards that appeared to be from new construction in his yard because there are no homes being built nearby. "We've got stuff around here; I don't even know where it came from," he said. not to get too attached to your things," he said. "And this is the season of Lent, a time of reflection and penance, and it's appropriate that we look deep into ourselves about this." That's something Barefoot is already doing. "I would have never gotten out of that truck if I wouldn't have seen that soldier run," she said, her voice full of emotion.

Revette has done his own introspection as well. "I'm grateful that I was used to help Charlene. I don't ever go home that way, and it's very humbling to recognize that God used me like that," he said. Ramp said his church will rally and recover. "We'll come through this and be stronger for it.

Right now it's a tall mountain to climb," he said. "But the church is not the building; it's the people." "We lived. We lived through it," said Chmiel, to which Simmons added, "Now we do the next thing that's in front of us. We pick up and move on." To contact Therese Apel, call (601) 961-7236. She is TRex21 on Twitter.

formers blew up in its path, had just taken the same route. At the same time Bake was praying in the bathtub and Chmiel, Simmons and their families had squeezed into a closet, Revette and Barefoot were right in the path of the tornado. The 20-year National Guardsman threw his vehicle into park and ran for a place where two walls of the church made a shelter of sorts. "I was at the foot of the cross, literally, when you think the steeple was right there," he said. "I remember looking up and seeing the little white truck, and I saw (Re-vette's) face." Barefoot credits Re-vette's clear thinking for saving her life.

She said until she saw him leave his vehicle, she had planned to wait out the storm in her truck there on the road behind the church. "I said, 'I need to go and get where the soldier's going because I know he knows what he was she said. She couldn't get to the corner where Revette lay, but she was able to get to a culvert-like spot next to the church wall. hour later his church would take a crippling, direct hit from a tornado that would also devastate the little houses that sit in the shadow of its steeple. "By that time it was storming, and we didn't know if we should have it, but we did anyway," Ramp said.

"They went home about 4:30, and about 5:20 was when this freight train came through here." Bake, from Illinois, heard the freight train, too. "My dad always told me tornadoes sound like a freight train, but I'd never heard one until yesterday," Bake said Monday. Bake and her roommate took shelter in the bathroom. "We sat in the bathtub and prayed, and we knew God would take care of us," she said. During this time, Ellis-ville resident Charlene Barefoot was trying to get to a meeting.

Seeing the traffic and the debris in the air, she turned off Hardy Street to try to find a safe place to weather the storm. Revette, having seen the tornado and watched the flashes of green and orange light as trans- "I just laid there with my head down, and I could hear stuff go everywhere, and then I heard a big bang and I didn't hear anything else," she said. "And then I looked up, and I didn't see nothing. It was dark." That's because a piece of the church wall had fallen on top of her hiding spot, covering it. Another piece of wall had fallen over where Revette hid.

The largest part of the church wall, built of cin-derblocks covered in bricks, had landed on Barefoot's truck, crushing it flat. "He's a miracle, and that woman had a guardian angel because her truck was leveled," Ramp said of the two survivors. Between making phone calls to family members, Barefoot and Revette were offered water at Bake's house. They sat on the front porch and looked at the entire neighborhood, where almost every house on the block had sustained substantial damage. "The jack from her truck was lying in our front yard," Bake said.

"After everything, everyone who was OK was walking around looking at the damage." Chmiel and Simmons were trying to get back to Chmiel's house to see if it was still intact. Because of the downed trees and power lines, they weren't able to drive back, so they walked. Chmiel said it was a horrible feeling to see that a tree had fallen through the bedroom where she had just been watching television. "There was a horrible gas leak; we were getting lightheaded," said Simmons. "We grabbed some pictures and things we couldn't replace and went back to my house." Chmiel and her family are staying with Simmons until her landlord can rebuild the home for her family.

Meanwhile, Bake said she's going to have to find a new place to live, too. While her prayers were answered and she had a roof over her head through the storm, the water made parts of the ceiling fall in the next day. Ramp said several other churches have offered to let his congregation use their facilities until the future of Westminster Presbyterian is clearer. "I guess it teaches you.