The storm, which touched down in Eagle Lake around 11:30 a.m., damaged from 65 to 70 homes, Warren County Sheriff Martin Pace said, but just two people in the town had minor cuts and abrasions. Neither was hospitalized. Ten people were confirmed dead and hundreds more homes were destroyed in other Mississippi counties.
Eagle Lake is primarily a resort community where homeowners come to spend weekends, Pace said, and not many people were there that weekend because of weather forecasts.
“It was supposed to be rainy and gloomy for the weekend… It was actually very fortunate,” Pace said. “We could have very easily had multiple fatalities.”
Homeowners and residents agreed they were lucky that nobody was hurt in their neighborhood.
Nancy Wilson said her children had planned to be at her vacation house for the weekend, but her son was called in to work Saturday.
The house, which sits on the very edge of the lake, is practically broken in two, the lake-side half sagging dangerously down the bank. Wilson picked her way through the wrecked rooms, stopping to pick up a plaque of a serenity prayer.
“Thank the good Lord they weren’t here,” Wilson said before entering her bedroom and laughing aloud at the curious sight – though the roof had collapsed in more than half the room and debris was thrown everywhere, the quilt was still meticulously in place on her bed.
Nancy Wilson takes stock of what once was a bedroom in her vacation home in Eagle Lake, Miss., Sunday, April 25, a day after a tornado ripped through the town. Wilson, who lives about two hours away in Sand Hill, Miss., said somebody from her family is usually at the vacation home about once a week.
“If [the tornado] had to hit, this is the best possible place for it to hit,” Wilson’s neighbor Rodney Walters said. Walters is a full-time resident of Eagle Lake, but had little damage to his home.
Not all full-time residents were as lucky, however. Cyndi Booth, 54, has rented her home in Eagle Lake for six years. She lives there with only her dog and her eight cats, and was home during the storm.
When she turned her TV on Saturday, Booth saw the tornado was actually on the lake, which is about a quarter-mile down the road from her house. She gathered her animals and went into her bathroom to take shelter.
Booth said she heard the roar and felt her house shaking. Then the wind picked her home up in the air and slammed it back down onto the foundation. It was over in a matter of minutes, she said.
Though Booth and her pets were unharmed, when she emerged from the bathroom she found five trees had fallen on and around her house, including one blocking the door.
“I still was so shaken by everything that I was like, ‘What do I do?’” Booth said. She eventually worked the door open far enough that she could squeeze through and got out.
Despite the absence of injuries and deaths, damage to homes was very severe, Sheriff Martin Pace said. Eleven of the Eagle Lake homes reported as damaged were completely destroyed, Sheriff Martin Pace said. Several more homes may end up being razed, pending insurance assessments.
Though the community is thankful there were no deaths in the town, the Saturday’s tornado devastated many homes like this one, only about a quarter mile from the lakefront. “This is the worst property damage from a tornado since I’ve been in office,” said Warren County Sheriff Martin Pace, who has been in his position since 1996.
Johnnie Nosser was in Eagle Lake cleaning up the property where his mother owned a vacation house. The house was completely blown away. Nosser watched smoke rise from the pile of rubble he had lit on fire in the place where the building once sat.
“It meant a lot to us,” Nosser said of the 54-year-old house. “I was a little boy when my father built it.”
Two generations of their family grew up coming to Eagle Lake for weekends and vacations, Nosser’s niece, Cathi Vernine, said.
“This place defined us growing up,” Vernine said.
The Red Cross had a temporary shelter set up at Eagle Lake Baptist Church, but nobody used it, according to Pace, so they closed it. Displaced residents have been choosing to stay with family and friends, he said.
The clean up will continue for some time, Pace said, and the sheriff’s department is trying to keep the area somewhat cordoned off, denying access to sight-seers and only allowing media in under escort.
“We’re maintaining a heavy law enforcement presence in that area,” Pace said. “So far we’ve had no problems. Everybody has been very respectful of the damage to their neighbors’ property.”
