GOODMAN, Miss. (WJTV) – An observed tornado left a trail of damage in Goodman on Tuesday, March 22 and one of the hardest hit areas was a local community college.
“Usually, we’re not the brightest college students, we like to sit out on the balcony and watch these storms, but this is the first one I actually went inside for,” said student, Holden Shipp.
A lot of damage was done at Holmes Community College. One of the dozens of damaged vehicles on campus belongs to the college’s head football coach– who was inside the football dorms when the roof was ripped off the building.
“We had our players in the dorm and we moved them all downstairs. The storm came so fast everything and kind of changed on us. Kind of scary but luckily, we made it through safely. We’re in the middle of our Spring ball and we had met with our players about 30 minutes before it hit,” said Head Football Coach Marcus Wood.
Just after lunch, the roofs of several buildings on campus were ripped off including the cafeteria. There were no students inside at the time, but the cafeteria staff had to quickly take shelter.
“When the sirens went off we went to a little room. We were only in there for about a minute and a half and all of a sudden, we heard a loud bang and then it was just quiet. We couldn’t get out. We had to call the police to come and unlock the door so we could get out,” said Food Service Director Tom King.
“We went outside to look and, just the roof all over the little alleyway that we sit and eat at,” said Shipp.
Students said they have never experienced anything like this before and hope they never have to again.
“A lot of people are outside. A lot of people are loading their vehicles. I’m trying to see when I can get out of here and go home. That was like a circus,” said Shipp.
Due to the damage and power outages, students will have to switch to virtual learning for at least the rest of the week. Holmes Community College President Jim Haffey was on campus when the tornado sirens sounded.
“I heard the siren and saw the clouds swirling over the trees, so we were able to get up under the house in a crawl space and it was just kind of pandemonium after that, we’re not going to be able to have water or power for a while so we’re arranging to get them off campus,” said President Jim Haffey.
Haffey said it could take weeks or even months and cost millions of dollars to repair all of the damage.