Area came together after storm
Published Wednesday, February 11, 2004
By Brant Sappington
Staff Writer

First came the rain, then the ice.
As the Cross City shivered, limbs fell from trees and streets turned treacherous a community came together to weather the storm.
This week marks a decade since the Crossroads area awoke to find itself blanketed with ice from what would forever be known as Ice Storm ‘94.
It would be almost three weeks to the day before power would be restored to all Alcorn County residents. Power crews worked day and night to replace the poles and restring the lines pulled down by the frozen precipitation.
“They were probably three of the toughest weeks I’ve ever spent in the electrical business,” recalled Jim Nanney, manager for the Alcorn County Electric Power Association.
He said local workers and dozens of crews from other areas labored constantly to rebuild the system ravaged by the severe storm.
Crews did not get much of a break once the lights were back on either. Nanney said many of the workers immediately headed to Clarksdale to assist in repairing their system.
Despite the lack of power, life did go on and so did death. Tim Haynie does maintenance work at Henry Cemetery and remembered having to prepare for a funeral during the storm recovery.
“We had services the next day or two days after the storm,” he said.
He said they spent long hours working to clear the roadways into the cemetery so the funeral procession could get in.
Corinth-Alcorn County E-911 faced its most serious crisis to date as the storm damaged electrical system caused them to lose power to computer and transmitting equipment.
E-911 Director Teresa Burns was a dispatcher for the office which was entering its third year of operation when the storm hit.
“We were really just getting our feet wet,” she said.
For an operation that relies on powerful radio gear to send help to those in need, the loss of power was a major setback.
“Everything was down,” she said.
The staff was forced to turn to walkie-talkies to remain in contact with law enforcement and rescue crews. The smaller, less powerful radios had a hard time transmitting from inside the office in the basement of the courthouse.
“We’d have to hang our head out the window,” she recalled.
She said one call they received was from a woman who had gone into labor in the county and rescuers couldn’t reach her because of the ice.
Burns said the strongest memory she has is of teamwork.
“It was just really awesome how everybody pulled together. Everybody was just doing what they had to do,” she said.
Laura Holloway of Wheeler Grove said she remembers the ice storm as a scary experience. Holloway had just found out she was pregnant with her daughter, Lee Ann, when the storm hit.
“I was scared to go out on the ice,” she said.
She recalled being without power for more than a week and staying with relatives. They used gas grills and Coleman stoves to cook meals.
At one of Corinth’s biggest industries, work continued in spite of a severely reduced work force. Daisy Patton of Caterpillar said many of their employees live outside the city and couldn’t get to work because of the conditions. “We were just running on a skeleton staff,” she said. “Everybody pulled together.”

Residents have some chilling memories
Published Wednesday, February 11, 2004
By Jebb Johnston
Staff Writer

For many area residents, the chilling memories of “ice storm ‘94” have less to do with the cold temperatures, sleet and freezing rain than the loss of necessities such as heat and electricity.
Then there’s that unsettling sound like gunfire that echoed all through the night.
“I remember waking up that morning and wondering: What is that sound?” said Paula Rushing, a Tishomingo resident.
Like much of the region, “we had a lot of devastation around here,” she said about the ice storm which hit Feb. 10, 1994.
In nearby Iuka, officials imposed a curfew in the storm aftermath, and the Mississippi National Guard dispatched military police to assist law enforcement.
In Corinth, Rob Price, now the fire chief, was on duty that night at station two on Sixth Street.
As the trees began falling, “we started going to calls of meter boxes pulled away from houses all over town,” said Price. “It got to where it was so many, we couldn’t go to them. Then the power went out at all the stations one at a time.”
Getting about town was becoming difficult, and orders eventually came to respond only to fire calls. Price recalled moving his parked truck out of the path of a tree that later came down.
At home, Price was without electricity for seven days.
“We finally got some fuel and cooked out on an old Coleman stove,” he said.
Price said his family read and played games by candlelight. On the day power was restored, his phone line was accidentally cut, leaving him without phone service for two days. Some residents were without electricity for weeks.
Before any clean-up took place, the city was completely in the dark and at a standstill.
“It was bad iced over everywhere,” said Johnny Hastings, a Corinth Street Department foreman. “You couldn’t see to drive. There was just a glare.”
He said it took about three weeks with employees working 10- to 12-hour days to get the streets back in order. Contract workers were brought in to help.
Most of the downtown streets were blocked by trees and limbs. Hastings said there’s been nothing that compares to the ice storm during his years with the street department.
Many remember a strong community spirit that surfaced during the tragedy.
“While we were out working, people grilling on their porch would invite us over to eat,” said Hastings. “It would really make you feel good. Corinth really came together.”
Alcorn County Emergency Management Agency Director Ray Gene Holloway said it was the worst weather-related disaster he has seen locally.
“We’ve worked tornadoes, but I think it was worse as far as confining everybody,” said Holloway. “It almost paralyzed us. I’d hate to see another one.”
Alton Thompson, director of programs for Corinth, said City Hall was up and running again the next day.
“We had lots of clean-up work to do,” said Thompson. “Everybody worked together and got things back together.”
His home was without power for eight days, so Thompson and his wife stayed with his mother.
“I realized how important electricity was,” he said. “You take a lot of things for granted. When they came and turned the power on, I could have hugged every one of them.”

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