Oxford, Miss.. After nearly two weeks of… blizzard After losing power to her home, Barbara Bishop still finds herself trying to turn off the lights and searching her refrigerator for food that has since spoiled.
Bishop, 79, and her husband, George Bishop, 85, live in a rural area near Oxford, Mississippi, where ice-covered trees have snapped in half, downing power lines and making roads nearly impassable.
After the storm hit, the bishops received their son, granddaughter and two children, whose homes had been cut off from electricity and water.
The family endured days of extreme cold with nothing but a gas heater to keep them warm. For a few days, they lost water.
“It was one of those times where you just have to grit your teeth and bare it,” Bishop said.
Nearly 20,000 customers remained without power in North Mississippi on Friday, according to PowerOutage.us, which tracks power outages across the country. That’s down from about 180,000 homes and businesses without power in Mississippi shortly after the storm struck late last month.
Lafayette County, where Oxford is located, had the most remaining power outages of any county Friday, with about 4,200 customers without power, followed by Tippah County with about 3,500. Panola, Yalobasha and Tishomingo counties had more than 2,000 customers without power.
After days of extreme cold, temperatures in Oxford reached 70 degrees on Friday, but chunks of ice were still scattered on the ground in shaded areas.
Fallen trees were gathered in large piles on the sides of the roads, some of them burned and still burning. Although most of the worst damage has been removed, power lines still hang low over roads and dotted parking lots in some places. Everywhere, tree limbs were hanging precariously.
Across the street from Bishops, Ross Jones and his wife have no electricity or water. For days, they used five-gallon buckets filled with water to flush toilets, cooked food on their gas stove and stayed warm by the fireplace.
“It was a shock to the system,” Jones said, adding that he and his wife began staying with powerful friends a few days ago.
On Friday, Jones Square was teaming up with volunteers from Eight Days of Hope, a nonprofit that responds to natural disasters. Volunteers removed downed tree limbs and moved a large tree that had fallen into Jones’ backyard.
The organization arrived days after the storm and helped dozens of homeowners clean up their yards and repair damaged roofs. It also provided more than 16,000 free meals.
Jones said it was a relief to know he had one less thing on his plate. When a volunteer handed him a free T-shirt and a blanket for his wife, he held back tears.
“It’s beyond anything I could have ever imagined,” he said.