In Batesville, Mississippi, a shelter that offers a critical refuge for residents without electricity is running out of space. Farther north, hospital workers in rural Tippah County spent days ferrying water from a pool outside so toilets could flush.
And in Rolling Fork, a small city in the Mississippi Delta, some have resorted to sleeping in their cars to stay warm following a storm that left such severe damage, officials across the state have likened it to a tornado.
The fallen trees and ravaged roofs, the scramble for shelter and questions about when the lights will come back on, are all too familiar in Rolling Fork nearly three years after a deadly EF-4 twister tore through.
“The damage from this ice storm is just as traumatic as what we faced during the tornado,” Rolling Fork Mayor Eldridge Walker said.
A week after a historic winter storm paralyzed communities across the Southeast, cutting electricity to hundreds of thousands, blocking roads with ice-encased tree limbs and leaving many grocery shelves empty, officials are still racing to keep residents safe as the extreme cold lingers. Adding to the urgency: A fresh blast of Arctic air is forecast for the region, expected to bring even more frigid temperatures late Friday through the weekend.
In Mississippi, officials said Friday that 16 people had died because of the storm, including a Lafayette County resident who fell while trying to refill a generator and three men who were found in a Tate County home after a fire that an emergency official said might have sparked from a space heater.
Republican Gov. Tate Reeves begged those stuck in heatless homes to move to facilities set up across the state before temperatures dropped Friday evening.
Zack Taylor, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said that nighttime lows this weekend could bottom out around 10 degrees Fahrenheit from Memphis, Tennessee, to Jackson, Mississippi.
“That could lead to frostbite or hypothermia, particularly if you have exposure or are unable to have a source of heating,” he said. Saturday’s high across the region may only reach the low or mid-20s, he added: “Very anomalously cold for that part of the country.”
Roughly 79,000 Mississippians were still without power as of Friday, according to PowerOutage.us. Entergy, a major electric company, said it had restored power to 75% of customers in the state affected by the storm as of Friday morning. The utility expects some homes to remain dark until Sunday evening.
Other utilities could take longer. The Tallahatchie Valley Electric Power Association, which serves several counties in north Mississippi, said in a Facebook post Friday that it can’t yet offer restoration times.
Mississippi officials said this was the worst winter weather since a 1994 ice storm froze the Mississippi Delta. In Oxford, Mississippi, Jerry Paten said he has been turning his gas stove on for a few minutes at a time in an attempt to keep warm.
“Just keep the faith,” said Paten, who has been without power for a week. “It’s rough.”
The storm has brought the college town to a halt, closing the University of Mississippi through Feb. 8. Ethel Scurlock, the dean of the university’s honor college, said several homes in her Oxford neighborhood have been destroyed. As trees fell, she said, it sounded like gunfire or fireworks.
“I heard somebody say something about ‘exploding trees,’” Scurlock said. “But I had no idea what that meant.”
Her family has kept her 88-year-old mother warm with a generator, but “most people in our neighborhood don’t even have that,” she said. Her husband, who has been assisting others with water leaks and limb removal, has been getting around on an off-road vehicle, because of debris blocking their driveway.
The National Guard has been deployed to both Mississippi and neighboring Tennessee. In Oxford, the Cajun Navy was among several volunteer organizations serving hot meals and delivering supplies.
Reeves said the state has begun preparing a major disaster declaration request to the White House.
About 30 minutes from Oxford in Batesville, Mayor Hal Ferrell said the city still had significant needs: Power poles are strewn across roads, and leaving home for provisions can be dangerous and exhausting. When traffic snarled earlier this week, Ferrell said he saw miles of 18-wheelers at a standstill on Interstate 55. The National Guard and volunteers helped rescue stranded drivers.
“You can’t go to your neighbor’s house and say, ‘Can I come in and warm up?’ because they don’t have it,” Ferrell said.
Jonathan Garner and his wife, Shea, have offered their roughly 5,000-square-foot warehouse as a warming shelter in Batesville for people who can’t get to hotels. The first arrivals, Garner said, came Saturday morning after they were left homeless by two trees that fell on their house. About 70 people are now staying there, Garner said, bringing the facility near capacity, and county emergency officials have announced additional shelters.
Ryan Celestine, 28, who runs an aviation school, has been staying at the Garners’ warehouse since Sunday after he lost power in his apartment in a local airfield hangar.
He’s taken on a leadership role at the facility, helping new arrivals get settled. A local church has provided hot meals. In the morning, he cranks up an additional heater and checks on his temporary roommates, many of them older adults or individuals with medical needs.
“I want them to be greeted by a warm face,” Celestine said. “Not somebody who’s cold and ready to go home.”
