News
Rolling Fork: The first 4 hours

The National Weather Service in Jackson issued the most severe warnings it could.
Earlier on Friday a statewide alert meeting was held with Emergency Management agencies, law enforcement and other interested parties to let them know this storm was serious and to expect the worst. It is the standard operating procedure for the National Weather Service to hold these meetings when malevolent weather threatens. A big part of their job is to let people know. In Vicksburg John Elfer and his team along with Dr. Magee from the Vicksburg-Warren School District attended the meeting.
Dr. Magee had some athletes at a game that should be over by the time the storm hit and another group of students that may be traveling around the time the threat begins.
It started getting windy in Vicksburg after 5:00 p.m. Some loud gusts moved things around but the storm itself didn’t threaten most of Warren County. Around 7:00 p.m., the wind picked up, there were scattered showers and a couple of power lines snapped. Nothing big.
About 10 minutes to 8:00 p.m., a tornado warning was issued for Sharkey County and it said the radar signal tornado was on a direct path to Rolling Fork.
Just after 8:00 p.m., a second warning was issued that a tornado was bearing down on Rolling Fork. The Vicksburg Daily News sent out an urgent alert for Rolling Fork to take shelter now.
Then it got bad
Hunter Ivy was working the part of dispatch that was covering fire emergencies. He could be heard over the radio relaying the traffic from Rolling Fork to local first responders. Within minutes of the tornado hitting Rolling Fork, Ivy made it clear to Warren County that a major event had just occurred. “They’ve got units missing, they’re screaming into the radio to send help.”
FireBoss Jerry Briggs had his chest opened for quintuple bypass surgery a couple of months ago and is working to regain his strength. When they open you up like that you lose the muscles in your chest and shoulders. It takes months, sometimes years, to get your strength back. Briggs was the first person from Warren County to signal that he was en route to Rolling Fork.
The Vicksburg Daily News called John Elfer to get an update and he was already organizing. He took our call to let us know it was serious and that he would update us when he could.
Hunter Ivy and the E-911 Communication Center in Warren County were organizing communications. Sharkey County had some communication equipment working immediately after the event, but that quickly quit working. No cell service and no radio service. Before they lost all communication it was clear that this was bad.
Warren County practices for these scenarios on a regular basis. Briggs contacted Chuck Tate, who is recovering from knee surgery and asked him to organize a team. With Ivy organizing communications a group of individuals dropped their Friday night plans and headed up to Rolling Fork. Mitch Lange, Marquis Holmes, Chuck Tate and Tim Wood. They were joined by a lot of other people including Lee Williams and his fiance, Lacey Duckworth. Robert Whitten and his wife along with Ritch Southard.
Vicksburg Deputy Fire Chiefs Trey Martin and Jessica Cade with the City of Vicksburg also headed up.
Briggs rolls into Rolling Fork
“I’ve been here a thousand times and I can’t tell where anything is. It is destroyed,” was the first report from Briggs. “It is piles and cars two-stories high.”
It was chaos. Rolling Fork officers had their vehicles destroyed and were doing everything they could with their smashed vehicles to assist people. Several of them were injured but kept on working. Briggs put out the word that this was big. Warren County dispatchers made sure that the word was spread to the surrounding agencies.
“It is like post-Katrina. You can’t see the roads, devastation everywhere,” was the report from Briggs.
For the next hour, teams from Vicksburg, Yazoo and surrounding counties rolled into Rolling Fork. Briggs and Elfer had established a command post at the AGUP Equipment center on Hwy 61 North. Everyone calls it the AG. Rodney Willingham is the corporate director for the AG in Rolling Fork. He and his team opened their doors and property to serve their community.
We cannot praise our 911 communications team enough
Radio communication through Ivy and the team of dispatchers that night cannot be praised enough. They were the focal point of organizing all the teams. Everything went through them. Everything. In addition to handling their normal Friday night call load, all Sharkey County calls were re-routed to them. They established an emergency channel for those working the tornado. It took a while to get everyone on the same channel. Those couple of hours meant repeating critical messages from one group to another.
Just after 9 p.m., Warren County Sheriff Martin Pace dispatched a couple of units to Merit Health River Region. The hospital was filling up with people injured in the tornado and the deputies were needed to direct traffic and maintain calm.
Elfer and Briggs organize an Emergency Response
John Elfer spends a lot of time waiting, planning and organizing. Most days are spent filling out forms, answering phones, ensuring processes are operating properly and communicating with the Board of Supervisors.
He and his team, Lisa Buchanan, Reed Birdsong and Tracy Porter work day in and day out serving our community and making sure we are prepared. When that tornado hit, not only were we prepared, Elfer and his team became the lead team organizing the recovery operation. Elfer and Briggs work as a team and see each other almost every day. While Elfer took the organizational lead, Briggs took over triage. Triage is where injured people receive their initial treatment, it was set up in the tractor bays of the Ag. Chuck Tate took over organizing recovery teams while Elfer worked with organizations that are used to running their own show and being their own boss, but he pulled them all together.
Warren County District 1 Supervisor Ed Herring was there from the beginning working as a liaison between the county and whoever needed help.
The tornado hit around 8:10 p.m. By 10:30 p.m. Elfer, Briggs, Tate and the team had organized several counties and with assistance from Briggs and his team, organized a way to bring together the large number of people beginning to show up in Rolling Fork to assist however they can.
The Mississippi Volunteer Army showed up
By midnight there was a small army of citizens, first responders and volunteers with boots on the ground in Rolling Fork. They were all sent to the Ag command center and partitioned into teams under the direction of John Elfer.
“We can’t do this without volunteers,” said Elfer. “It takes volunteers.”
The word was out that this disaster was a major event. They had already recovered some bodies and some more were located as time progressed. There was no electricity or water in the area so the darkness of the night hid the magnitude of the disaster while vehicles continued to roll in at the Ag Command Center.
Sheriff Martin Pace called several off-duty deputies in to assist. Sheriff Pace got in his deputy uniform as well. They won’t know him on site in Rolling Fork as everyone does in Warren County. The uniformed group rolled out of Warren County just before 10 p.m., not even two hours after the disaster.
Warren County was well represented among the mass of people helping in Rolling Fork. The initial effort was to recover anyone who may be trapped in the rubble. There were several. Many people were transported to hospitals in Vicksburg, Yazoo and surrounding counties. By 10:30 p.m. all the nearby hospitals were full and patients were being directed to Jackson hospitals.
Mayor Flaggs ordered four ambulances to Rolling Fork. Surrounding communities did the same. By 1:00 a.m. there were more ambulances in Rolling Fork than known patients.
Steve Cunningham with E-911 worked on-site at the Vicksburg Police Command Center that was moved to Rolling Fork to organize a local communications center.
There were also at least 400 volunteers working with first responders to scour the rubble looking for anyone who may be trapped.
Sunrise in Rolling Fork
As bad as everyone knew it was Friday night, nothing could prepare people for the first views of Rolling Fork when the sun came up. The tornado went right through town, starting near the courthouse on a path directly headed to Chuck’s Dairy Bar. It stayed on the ground the whole time and churned its way through homes, businesses, a water tower and countless vehicles. The Family Dollar collapsed and took lives. The trailer park behind Chuck’s Dairy Bar was flattened, also taking a couple of lives.

The young man in the center of the photo is searching for his friend just after sunrise. The tornado killed several people in the trailer park behind Chuck’s Dairy Bar. Photo by David Day
Chuck’s Dairy Bar was in the direct path of the tornado. Tracy Hardin and her team took refuge in the cooler of the local landmark and rode out the tornado there. The iconic eating place was destroyed by the tornado. Hardin walked out shaken, but uninjured.
By sunrise, the second shift had taken over the recovery effort. MHP took control of Highway 61 North directing traffic around Rolling Fork. An endless stream of vehicles with water, toiletries, blankets and sheets was rolling up Highway 61. Locations were named to give donations and several organizations in Mississippi gathered trailer loads of goods. Numerous people, including local business owner Charles Toney, brought food and snacks for anyone who needed it.
The day after
Saturday morning news was dominated by the disaster. National attention was focused on Rolling Fork and the individual stories of loss and survival.
Local, state, and national recovery groups have started doing what they do.

This loyal family member stands guard at the destroyed home. He was reunited with his family. Photo by David Day
The recovery process for Rolling Fork will take years. People are without shelter and basic necessities. Some people lost everything, some lost loved ones. Practically every local group in Warren County has organized to provide for Rolling Fork.
Today
Rescue and recovery of the people impacted is largely complete. For now, all efforts are pointed toward the immediate needs of food and shelter. Several groups will be feeding and attending to the needs of the people of Rolling Fork over the next few days.
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