Severe weather in the form of a combined 55 tornadoes, rain, hail and strong winds plowed through several Southern states Tuesday, including Mississippi.According to several news reports, Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky and Tennessee sustained at least 56 deaths as a result of the weather.
No deaths have been announced in Mississippi, but an article from The Clarion-Ledger indicates that state officials reported 20 people injured in the three counties affected.
Gov. Haley Barbour declared a state of emergency Wednesday due to tornado damage in North Mississippi, including Alcorn, DeSoto and Lafayette counties. Mississippi State University’s Crisis Action Team and the climatology lab monitored the situation. Maroon Alerts were sent via text messages, Web site messages and e-mails during the afternoon, warning the MSU community of possible tornadic activity in Starkville into the early morning.
Director of university relations Maridith Geuder said Bill Kibler, vice president for student affairs, was in command of the CAT on Tuesday. Kibler was out of town and could not be reached for comment.
Mike Brown, director of the climatology lab and associate professor for geosciences, said two sirens went off Wednesday at approximately 1:15 and 2:15 a.m.
The National Weather Service alerts the climatology lab that a tornado warning is about to be issued. Brown said he called the Emergency Operations Center in Starkville Wednesday to notify them of the warning. He said the EOC sounds the sirens but he can request that they be sounded.
The first siren was late, but Brown said that was not anyone’s fault. The storm did not show tornadic activity until it was almost on top of the campus, and it takes a few minutes to get the sirens going, he said.
“In a sense, we were a little late, but in another sense, there was very little that could have been done to alleviate the problem,” he said.
Maroon Alerts were not sent during the storm period partly because sirens were thought to be the best alert, Brown said.
Neither of the two storms brought tornadoes when they were close to campus.
CAT co-chair and dean of students Mike White said he is not aware of any students that lost homes, family or friends during the storms.
Sophomore marketing major Rebekah Davis is from Jackson, Tenn., where multiple tornadoes hit.
“I was shocked and worried because my parents live about a mile away from Union [University],” Davis said.
Union sustained significant damage. Fifty-one students were taken to the hospital, according to reports on the college’s Web site. Although 13 students were trapped in rubble, there were no deaths.
David Harlan, a sophomore chemistry major at Union, was in a friend’s dormitory room on the first floor when the first tornado hit. He and five others got into a bathroom to wait it out. The first tornado lasted for about 30 seconds, but it took awhile to get out of the bathroom due to fallen debris, Harlan said.
“Once the storm hit, we were [stuck] in the bathroom for 10 to 15 minutes. There was a big wall that fell in front of the door, so we had to break out through a window,” he said.
Harlan said his roommate was one of the 13 students trapped under a collapsed building for several hours.
He advises students to seek shelter during tornadoes by going into a bathroom on the first floor.