Anunciata Schwebel could only watch in horror on FaceTime while her friend and tenant slunk into a bathtub to take cover from one of several tornadoes that slammed into Mississippi just after sunset Wednesday.
Her friend screamed that the windows were breaking. Schwebel could see on her screen the devastation to the cluster of cottages she owned in the town of Purvis — walls and roofs ripped away, her tenants huddled in their bathrooms.
“We could see a line of people sitting in their tubs,” Schwebel said Thursday. “We thought people were dead.”
Yet, for a second time in less than a month, a big burst of tornadoes caused no deaths. Authorities estimated that 500 homes were damaged across five counties Wednesday and said at least 17 people were injured. The powerful storms spawned at least three tornadoes across the bottom half of Mississippi that could be seen on weather radar, meteorologists said, possibly more.