As a devastating tornado ravages a town in Mississippi, a displaced family finds their way home

ROLLING FORK, ma’am. — As a deadly tornado barreled toward their home in the Mississippi Delta, Ida Cartlidge only had time to pick up her 1-year-old son, Nolan, and hold him close.

Cartlidge sat with her husband and three sons huddled on the living room floor of their Rolling Fork mobile home, where thin walls separated the family from 200 mph winds.

“I held my baby so tightly. I said, ‘Honey, I’m probably hurting you right now, but I just can’t let you go,'” she recalled.

Then the tornado hit and the house was gone. The twister launched Cartlidge into the air and pulled Nolan from her arms. She remembers seeing him hovering above her, as if they were both floating in the air.

She landed with a thud. Miraculously, Nolan fell onto her chest. He was the only family member to escape the storm unscathed.

The tornado that destroyed Cartlidge’s home last March killed 14 of Rolling Fork’s roughly 1,700 residents and left the city in ruins as it carved a brutal path through one of the country’s poorest regions. For the people there, a complicated story of struggle and resilience has emerged in the year since the storm changed everything and exposed vulnerabilities that many survivors had been dealing with long before March 2023.

The Cartlidge family spent the next year living in a cramped motel room, looking for a more permanent home, like many of their displaced neighbors.

“There is still a lot of suffering,” Sen. Joseph Thomas, who represents Rolling Fork in the state Legislature, said in a recent interview. “And you’re looking at an area that was already depressed.”

Rolling Fork is in Sharkey County, where the poverty rate hovers around 35% — nearly double Mississippi’s roughly 19% rate and triple the national poverty rate of nearly 12%, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Before the storm, Cartlidge, 33, and her husband, Charles Jones, 59, had built a quiet life in a long, narrow three-bedroom, two-bathroom mobile home with their sons: Jakavien, 13, Amarii, 12, and Nolan. . She worked in customer service for an appliance company and Jones was a mechanic at a local auto parts store.

Cartlidge suffered a crushed pelvis and a broken shoulder during the tornado. Jakavien punctured a lung and shattered bones in his spine and shoulder blade. Amarri had deep cuts on his back and ankles. Jones injured his ribs and spine.

The mobile home park where they lived was also home to most of the 14 people who died in the tornado. Large families lived together in one- and two-bedroom units, which helped offset the financial pressures inherent in a region where stable jobs are scarce.

According to Rolling Fork Mayor Eldridge Walker, Sharkey County lost nearly 400 jobs after the tornado. The tornado destroyed about 300 buildings, including numerous homes and businesses, meaning the city lost tax revenue, he said. In February 2024, Walker wrote a letter to Thomas advocating for additional state funds.

The city’s infrastructure suffered millions of dollars in damage. Public buildings, streets, and the city’s sewer and drainage systems suffered serious damage or were destroyed. A year after the tornado, buildings in the city are still boarded up and the remains of destroyed properties are scattered across the landscape.

The local high school remains closed due to ongoing damage, forcing students to ride buses to nearby towns. Destroyed vehicles continue to hinder residents’ ability to navigate their daily lives.

“People were being pushed out of their transportation networks,” said William Keith, who worked in disaster relief for the American Red Cross. “A lot of people went to the grocery store with their neighbor, or they had a buddy a few blocks away. , and then started working with them.”

After everyone was released from the hospital, the Cartlidge family moved into a two-bed motel room just minutes down the highway from where their mobile home was located. The Rolling Fork Motel is a one-story brick building with green doors and a bright yellow sign that rises above Route 61, known as the “Blues Highway.”

Music is an integral part of Rolling Fork’s history. Blues legend Muddy Waters is a born son. The highway that runs through the city symbolizes the genre’s popular theme of packing up and leaving your troubles behind, according to the Mississippi Blues Commission.

Convincing locals to stay is a more difficult task these days.

More than 70% of Rolling Fork residents displaced by the tornado were renters. Nonprofit housing assistance programs stepped in after the tornado, but most are aimed at homeowners rather than renters or people who lived with relatives, Thomas said.

Queen’terica Jones, 23, lived with her mother, Erica “Nikki” Moore, and three children in a mobile home just down the street from Cartlidge. The night of the tornado, she found her mother’s lifeless body face down in the rubble.

Jones had no legal rights to her mother’s property and did not have the documents required by many programs that financed new mobile homes for displaced residents. Items that previously seemed ordinary – housing documents, family heirlooms, tax returns – suddenly took on life-changing meaning for her.

“It is a difficult period. From losing your mother to having to start all over again,” Jones said. “Jesus, that’s a lot.”

Without steady work and housing, Jones has moved between the homes of friends and relatives since the storm. It’s a common story in Rolling Fork, where public services and steady work that had always been elusive became even scarcer in the storm’s wake.

“Cities like Rolling Fork tend to have a smaller tax base and fewer economic resources to respond to and recover from such disasters,” said Ryan Thomson, a professor of rural sociology at Auburn University. “Federal and state support often falls short of local needs.”

Nonprofits, the state and federal government came together to help. But if aid doesn’t meet the city’s lingering needs, officials fear an exodus is likely.

“We strive for a better Rolling Fork,” Walker wrote in his letter to Thomas. “And the opportunity to keep our people in this city.”

The Red Cross paid for extended stays at the Rolling Fork Motel for displaced residents, and for months, volunteers dressed in red vests distributed groceries and supplies to weary residents. They piled everything the storm hadn’t brought into corners, making room for donated packages of Cup Noodles and Capri Sun.

For almost an entire year, the Cartlidge family lived in that cramped motel room with only the basic necessities. But they owned their destroyed mobile home, making them eligible for a new one through a nonprofit called Samaritan’s Purse.

In February, they moved into a renovated trailer near downtown, with a “Home Sweet Home” mat greeting them at the door. They cried in each other’s arms when they saw the building.

That evening, Ida served the children popcorn and soda on a platter and they all watched horror movies – none as scary as the nightmare they had experienced together a year earlier.

Then they went to bed, each in their own room.

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Michael Goldberg is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow him at @mikergoldberg.