As county officials were briefing law enforcement and reporters on the status of the Oktibbeha County Lake dam on Tuesday evening, American Red Cross employees were driving from Greenville to Starkville in order to open the First Baptist Church Outreach Center as an overnight shelter for potential evacuees.
The warehouse on South Jackson Street is a Red Cross-designated lodging shelter that can house 400 displaced citizens overnight and about 200 on a long-term basis, volunteer Wanda Webb said. She and fellow volunteer Johnnie Donald, a registered nurse, arrived in Starkville between 8 and 9 p.m. Tuesday with a U-Haul trailer full of supplies, including cots and blankets. The warehouse already has bathrooms and showers, and the Red Cross staff will set up the cots on the basketball court if needed.
“We’re here just in case, to give people somewhere safe to go,” Webb said.
Recent storms have put the levee at the Oktibbeha County Lake Dam in “imminent” danger of breaching and flooding 17,500 acres of nearby land, which would force about 250 people to evacuate at least 130 households, from area immediately around the lake northwest of Starkville all the way to parts of southwest Clay County. Two inspections Tuesday morning showed that water was seeping between the dam and the bedrock underneath it, pushing sand boils to the surface and forming a crack on the slope.
The county Emergency Management Agency and board of supervisors issued a warning, encouraging area residents to evacuate to higher ground. The warning will upgrade to an emergency and the recommendation to evacuate will become a mandate if water starts streaming out of the levee, EMA Director Kristen Campanella said.
A second situation that will prompt an evacuation order is if the mudslide in the seeping area of the levee reaches the pavement on County Lake Road, Campanella told county officials, law enforcement and reporters at a Wednesday briefing.
District 3 Supervisor Marvell Howard told The Dispatch the levee status was “about the same” this morning.
The National Weather Service predicts three to five inches of rain in the area this weekend, and Campanella said she is in regular contact with the NWS office in Jackson to monitor the forecast. Half an inch of rain can raise the water level in the lake by about four feet in 24 to 36 hours.
Howard, who lives just behind the levee, said he checked the levee once an hour Tuesday night to make sure the situation had not worsened. He has received several phone calls from constituents, ranging from prayers and offers of help to worries about the future.
“Some calls have been, ‘How did we let it get to this state?'” Howard said. “(There is) a lot of concern about where we go from here and if we’re going to continue to just sort of keep our fingers crossed or if we’re going to make a concerted effort to do what it takes to remedy this situation.”
The county storm shelter at the intersection of Lynn Lane and Industrial Park Road in Starkville was open for evacuees on Tuesday, but no one showed up and the county did not reopen it Wednesday, Campanella said.
The shelter at FBC has been in place for years and was built in response to Hurricane Katrina, but “we’re just thankful we’ve never really had to use it,” Associate Pastor Clifton Curtis said.
Pets are not allowed at either shelter, but the Oktibbeha County Humane Society will temporarily house pets if owners drop them off.
The church’s scheduled youth ministry events went on as planned on Wednesday, but Curtis said they were prepared to clear out the warehouse if evacuees arrived, and they will adjust Sunday’s activities if necessary.
“Everything’s kind of hypothetical right now, but we’re flexible,” Curtis said.
Webb said the staff is prepared to provide three full meals for evacuees as well. She and Donald both said they find their work with the Red Cross fulfilling.
“I like helping people,” Webb said. “I could stay out here for two months.”
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