Mississippi governor on deadly tornado strike amid coronavirus outbreak
Gov. Tate Reeves addresses violent storms, tornadoes that swept through Mississippi and other southern states.
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Republican Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves joined "Bill Hemmer Reports" Monday to discuss how his state is dealing with a string of deadly tornadoes that ripped through the state while people were staying at home due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Reeves, who noted he's only been in office for 90 days, said the tornadoes were the fifth federally declared disaster he has dealt with.
"We have seven [federal disasters] that have occurred in the last year, so we took some of our team and focused them on disaster response from the tornadoes," he said. "We still have our state EOC [Emergency Operations Center] open 24/7, [and it] has been for months on end. They've got very dedicated people, they're tired right now, as you can imagine, but were committed to working with our local governments and working with our local first responders," he said.
According to the Clarion-Ledger newspaper, at least 100 homes were damaged or destroyed in a single county alone in southern Mississippi's Jefferson Davis County, located just west of Hattiesburg.
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At least 80 residents were displaced in Jefferson Davis County, while several dozen homes were damaged and more than 100 roadways closed in two counties in the northwestern part of the state saw , according to the paper.
Reeves told host Bill Hemmer that at least a dozen tornadoes had touched down statewide.
"But in addition to the tornadoes, we actually had fatalities that were caused by some of the straight-line winds. We saw tornadoes, the like of which we haven't seen in this state in a long, long time with winds as high as 200 miles per hour," he said.
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He noted that most Mississippians were home on Easter Sunday worshipping, as churches have been shuttered because of the virus pandemic.
"The challenge was, the storms are very, very violent, particularly in that southern part of our state where we had two tornadoes take almost exactly the same path," he said. "We currently have 11 fatalities, but we have search and rescue missions that are ongoing."
"One thing about Mississippi, Bill, when it's time to step up and held our friends and our neighbors, Mississippians step up and do exactly that," Reeves remarked.