‘Lights out’ as mid-week storms damage power grid

Last week’s severe weather event encompassing several counties in Southwest Mississippi, including Walthall, did not amount to much in the way of damage, according to the county’s emergency operations director, Royce McKee.
In anticipation of a severe weather event forecast by the weather service, schools in Walthall and surrounding counties shut down.
Walthall students got an extra holiday Thursday because power to campuses was not restored.
County courthouse workers also got Wednesday off as supervisors shut down local government offices for the day. Additionally, there were some downtown private businesses that did not open Wednesday as well.
“We were under a flood watch; tornado watch and severe thunderstorm watch at varying times during the day. The county experienced some heavy rains and high winds, culverts washed out, trees and limbs down and power outages,” McKee said.
Downed trees and limbs pulled down power lines within the city limits of Tylertown. Residents in the area of Church Street were in the dark when a tree damaged a power line.
Magnolia Electric had 11,700 without power throughout its service area of several counties Wednesday morning as the storm moved through the region served by the cooperative. By Wednesday night at 10 p.m. MEP had reduced the outages to just over 1700. The massive outage was caused by the severe thunderstorms that passed through MEP’s service area causing trees to fall on power lines.
Entergy reported widespread outages throughout its entire system. As of mid-morning Thursday, the company was still working to restore power to 312 county residents.
McKee said he welcomes damage reports from residents as they are helpful in preparing damage estimates for the county and MEMA.
While there were reports of tornadoes in Southwest Mississippi, McKee said Slidell, La., was hit by a tornado causing severe damage in that area.