HATTIESBURG, Miss. — Rain was pouring down in the pre-dawn darkness, and the wind was picking up as Darryl McMorris ran for his daughters’ bedroom. The windows started blowing out as he dove on top of his girls, grabbing one under each arm as he tried to protect them.
“As soon as I did that it seemed like we were flying in the air,” he recalled Saturday. Walls began to collapse and the house began to blow apart as his daughters screamed. But he held on tight.
When the tornado finished ripping its way through their Hattiesburg home, he and the two girls were under a wall. Their house appears to be a total loss, bedding tossed 50 feet into a tree and their oldest daughter asking, “Is God mad at us?” But they’re alive.
Across the tornado’s devastating path, families were taking stock of the damage, hugging friends and neighbors, grieving over the remains of their homes and in many cases mourning those killed.
Authorities said four people died when the twister touched down around 3:35 a.m. Saturday. Shannon Hefferan, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said damage reports indicate it touched down in Lamar County before ripping into Forrest County and skirting just south of downtown Hattiesburg — the state’s fourth largest city.
The tornado continued across the Leaf River into neighboring Petal. Emergency management officials said the severe weather also damaged Perry and Jones counties.
Teams were out assessing the damage Saturday. The tornado was accompanied by a deluge of rain — 3.42 inches over a six- to seven-hour period Saturday morning — Hefferan said.
Monica McCarty lost her father, Earnest Perkins, 58, and her son, Cleveland Madison, 20, who was crushed to death in bed at her mother’s house.
Standing amid the tornado’s carnage, McCarty wept as her boyfriend, Tackeem Molley, comforted her.
“They couldn’t get him out of the house. They said he was lying in the bed,” McCarty said of her son.
In the surrounding neighborhood, sheet metal was strewn everywhere. Trees turned into spindly sticks were lying across power lines. At least three churches had sustained damage.
Mayor Johnny DuPree signed an emergency declaration for the city.
Greg Flynn of the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency said “massive damage” was reported. At least 50 people were treated for injuries at two area hospitals, he said. Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney said insured damage is likely to top $200 million.
At William Carey University, a Baptist institution south of downtown Hattiesburg, almost every building on campus had at least superficial damage. Many were heavily damaged. College officials closed the campus where 3,200 students study and 800 students live and are not sure when it will reopen.
For students in their dorms when the tornado struck, it was terrifying. Tegan Sager, a freshman from Hermiston, Ore., said she’d never been in a tornado before. She said bursts of lightning lit up the outside just before the tornado hit. She and 20 other students huddled in the first-floor hallway of their dorm, cradling their heads in the hands.
“That’s when the panels from the roof were falling in,” she said. “Girls were screaming, and a person next to me got cut on the leg.”
