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Saturday Morning News

Storm Ravages Mississippi

Aired February 24, 2001 - 9:22 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Another big story is the weather that hit Mississippi.

JILL BROWN, CNN METEOROLOGIST: That's right, Kyra. It was a week ago we were talking about the severe storms that came from Mississippi, and, you know, you see it on the news, it comes and goes for us. But when you live there, it lasts for much, much longer, and that seems to be the case now, it looks like, for the next few months. We're just entering severe weather season, so this might act as a sort of a deterrent for you, or, excuse me, I should say a warning to you what you might be facing.

In Mississippi they had just straight-line winds that caused a lot of damage. And joining us on the phone is Jeffrey Rupp from WCBI in Columbus, Mississippi. He is the news director there.

Mr. Rupp, are you on the phone?

JEFFREY RUPP, NEWS DIRECTOR, WCBI, COLUMBUS, MISSISSIPPI: Yes, ma'am.

BROWN: I understand you had quite an experience when the storm came through. You were in your car. Can you tell us about what happened to you?

RUPP: Well, I drive a Jeep, the old canvas-topped Jeep, and I had just dropped a friend off, we'd had lunch, Joe Dylan (ph). And we were remarking how green the sky was. And literally, within a minute, he went back into his store, the windows were blown out, I started driving back to the station. My Jeep was picked up, it was set back on the ground. The windshield was broken by debris. And trees around me just started snapping off and flying.

BROWN: That must have been...

RUPP: But -- I'm sorry?

BROWN: That just must have been a shock. And it wasn't even a tornado. Were you injured when this happened?

RUPP: I wasn't injured, and one good thing about this storm is, as widespread as the damage was, we didn't have any reported deaths, at least in our viewing area. But Jill, you're probably more familiar with the term than I am. They classified it as a directo (ph) storm which was sustained straight-line winds, supposedly deadlier than a tornado. And the devastation is so widespread that it'll be months and months before Columbus recovers.

BROWN: That's right, directo winds, and they can be as devastating as a tornado, really can cover a lot of ground. We had some scenes from a school in Stockville, which is near by you, Stockville Academy, really amazing damage through here. You can see a woman going through and trying to pick up the book bags. The roof is gone from this school.

Were there any injuries, do you know, about this area?

RUPP: Well, there were some minor injuries. Fortunately, again, no deaths. These students happened to get in the hallway and literally, you know, imagine, these are just small children, they watched the roof blow off from over their heads. And then that storm moved -- or storm moved from Octiba (ph) into Lounds (ph) County, and we had over 3,000 homes in Lounds County damaged, which was just amazing.

But there are still people that don't have power. We just got our lights restored last night, still no phone service. But I talked with a woman this morning, no power, and she still may not have it for days. And we're looking 10 days after the storm hit.

BROWN: I understand almost the entire city was without power. Is that true?

RUPP: Well, for some time, the entire city was without power, and the nice thing about living in the South, crews came from all over and just average citizens from different towns just showed up with dump trucks and chain saws and pitched in to try to get people back on their feet. But there are so many homes destroyed, and it spared no neighborhood. I've never seen anything like it. We're used to tornado damage cutting a small path of really severe destruction. I've never seen it on this scale before.

BROWN: All right, Jeffrey Rupp from WCBI in Columbus, Mississippi, thanks for joining us this morning.

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