On March 24, 2023, an EF-4 tornado swept through Rolling Fork, Mississippi, as part of a larger twister outbreak throughout the state and Alabama. More than a dozen people were killed in the town alone.
On Sunday, just ahead of the two-year mark, the Sharkey County Emergency Management Director Frank Eason attended a commemorative event for the grim occasion when another twister touched down.
This time only one home was reported to be damaged — Eason’s.
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Natalie Perkins, the deputy director of Sharkey County Emergency Management, told CBS News on Tuesday that Eason was at a commemorative event to mark two years since the 2023 tornado at a church in Rolling Fork when the twister hit on Sunday. Footage taken by residents shows a funnel cloud forming in the sky in Rolling Fork.
“He attempted to get to his house while watching the tornado come across farm fields between state highways 14 and 16,” she said.
The twister damaged the roof of Eason’s home and the roof of his carport “was taken off,” Perkins said.
“One wall of a metal outbuilding was torn away and his county EMA truck was damaged,” she told CBS News. “…His wife was inside the home but was not hurt.”
Perkins said no other damage has been reported except for trees and power lines along Highway 16. The National Weather Service Jackson office said it is conducting a survey of the damage after receiving reports of the tornado.
Eason’s home took a hit almost two years to the day after Rolling Fork was hit by an EF-4 tornado with wind speeds of up to 195 mph, according to the NWS Jackson office — the strongest tornado to impact the state since 2011. EF4s are the second-highest level of a tornado on the Enhanced Fujita scale.
Hundreds of homes and businesses in Rolling Fork and nearby Silver City were destroyed in the 2023 twister, with hundreds more damaged. While more than a dozen people were killed just in Rolling Fork, the death toll reached nearly two dozen across the state and Alabama from the storms, with NASA’s Earth Observatory saying 20 tornadoes were reported that day across the two states.
