The storms that swept through Mississippi Wednesday morning cost a Webster County woman her home.
Merlene Grimsley”s house on Highway 50 near the Webster/Clay County line caught fire around 4:30 a.m. after she reported hearing a loud boom which blew out several windows.
Approximately 40 firemen from Maben, Pheba, Mathiston and the Bell Schoolhouse Fire Department battled the blaze for nearly five hours, pouring more than 20,000 gallons of water on it, before an insurance adjuster advised they allow the house to burn down.
“We”ve never had a fire we couldn”t put out,” said an exasperated Dwayne Bigham, chief of the Pheba Volunteer Fire Department.
Bigham said the fire had reached the home”s basement, which runs the length of the house, as well as the living area and the attic, making it incredibly hard to extinguish.
Firefighters attempted an interior attack but were forced out of the house after two men fell through the floor into the basement. The firefighters, one from Pheba and one from Maben, were quickly extracted and checked out by EMTs. Both were unharmed and able to continue fighting the blaze.
“It was a pretty hairy deal but luckily nobody got hurt. Our training came through and we got them back out of there,” said Bigham.
Grimsley was able to save some clothing and several items from the garage of the home, including a refrigerator and a riding lawn mower, before watching her home burn to the ground from a car on the side of the road.
“All the firemen and highway patrol did such a wonderful job,” was all she wished to say.
To Bigham”s knowledge, Grimsley”s home was the only house fire to result from the storms, but he noted all of Clay County”s fire departments had been hard at work since 2:30 a.m. cutting and clearing fallen trees from roads and highways. Countless homes were damaged by falling trees, including one fatality in Webster County, where a man died when a tree fell on his mobile home.
One woman, said Bigham, was trapped in her car on Hoss Johnson Road when a tree fell on the car. Bigham said it took firefighters several hours to reach the woman because approximately 30 trees had to be cleared from Walker Sanders Road in order to reach Hoss Johnson Road.
The Maben Fire Department initially couldn”t reach Grimsley”s home due to fallen trees along Highway 50. After abandoning the house fire, Bigham said the firemen would go right back to clearing roads.
“We”re fixing to wrap up the fire truck and go get the saws back out,” he said.
A new storm system was due to move in Wednesday and fire personnel warned citizens to be on the lookout for falling trees, even if there”s no wind, due to the saturated ground.
Jason Browne was previously a reporter for The Dispatch.
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