Clark Secoy was working in his liquor store.

He said it was an average Friday night at first.

- When I turned it on to see, the guy was already talking.

He said, "Rolling Fork, you got two minutes."

And so, the employee, and myself, and the customer went in the back of the back of the store and road it out.

- Levi Robinson was watching the news too.

- I was on the phone talking to my pop and mama, and I was watching the news on the TV.

And they said it was a tornado, a big, dangerous tornado, seven mile west of Rolling Fork.

And I called Pop, I say, "Pop, there's something serious headed y'all way."

And Pop said, "Yeah, yeah, it's gonna blow like it always do."

I said, "No, Pop."

I said, "And they said it was dangerous."

So when it got about three miles, I said, "Pop, you and mama go get in the bathtub."

And Pop said, Pop was standing at the door.

And Pop said, "I don't see nothing!"

And I said, then I heard Mama say, "James, come get in the bathtub."

And then, all of a sudden, I heard Mama and Pop hollering.

And he told me... And Mama was stuck in the tub.

He couldn't get out.

And then, all of a sudden, the phone went dead.

That was the longest 17 minutes of my life.

- Tracy Harden was at work that night at Chuck's Dairy Bar, the local landmark that she and her husband own on Highway 61.

- And in that one minute time after that message, the lights blinked.

And luckily, we had all headed to the back of the building, because they were telling me that her mom had called.

I was letting them know my message from my daughter, and the lights blinked, and I said, "Cooler."

My husband yanked the door and started throwing us in.

The lights went out.

We were being tossed [phone ringing] a little bit here and there.

And that was a scary moment.

- Yeah.

- And it just lasted a very short time, but I feel like it was forever.

- Charles Weissinger combed through the rubble of his law office one day when we were there.

That night, Charles had just finished giving his five-year-old grandson, Fisher, a bath.

- Got him out of the tub right about eight o'clock.

And then, I was trying to get his trunks on him, and he was not interested at all, he was running around naked, laughing.

And then, all of a sudden, I heard this terrible noise.

And I started feeling real clammy.

And I knew something bad was happening.

- Charles took his grandson to the safest place he could find, the stairway landing.

- So I got him and got out on the landing, which was protected on three sides and laid down on him, and it blew through.

And she came, Anne came running to the foot of the stairs, and I told her, screaming.

I said, "Get down, I got the baby.

Get down!"

- This was once the foundation of Undray Williams' home.

He represents Ward 4 on the Town's Board of Alderman.

It was directly in the path of the tornado.

- In a matter seconds, it was right up on me.

No warning, no nothing.

And next thing I know, I heard boards flying.

It was like angels lifting me up off the ground.

And slowly, it was like slow motion.

And next thing I know, I was in the tub.

- Natalie Perkins is the editor of Rolling Fork's weekly newspaper, "The Deer Creek Pilot."

She's also second in command of the county's emergency management team.

That Friday night, Natalie was at her daughter's prom.

- One of the parents came in and said that his son, that a tornado had hit Rolling Fork and his son was trapped in his house.

And I looked at my daughter and said, "I have to go to work."

And I didn't see her for two days after that.

- Perkins immediately raced back to Rolling Fork, checked on the newspaper office, and retrieved her emergency radio.

- Standing there in that parking lot and listening to the gas hissing, I mean, it was just a roar of gas hissing.

And I think at that moment, it just, it really hit me that my town was gone, devastated.

- The west side of Rolling Fork is where the tornado hit first.

About 60 miles away in Jackson, Mississippi, weather experts, including a guy named Logan Poole, were watching a killer tornado develop, and they worried about the people in it's path.

- What's actually important is to recognize that these can happen, these will continue to happen.

And when they do, they're more dangerous here than essentially anywhere else in the country.

- Logan Poole is a meteorologist with the National Weather Service Team in Jackson.

He showed us what he was tracking on his computer that Friday night.

- And we were watching the cluster of storms coming out of northeast Louisiana, crossing the Mississippi River.

We started to see it, and then, suddenly, almost within a number of minutes, we had one of the most destructive tornadoes on the ground that this state has ever experienced.

- Logan was familiar with Rolling Fork.

He had passed through town earlier in March on his way to inspect damage from an earlier tornado that had struck the nearby town of Anguilla.

As he watched the tornado bear down, Logan thought about the people in its path.

- I was there a few weeks before.

and I think to myself, "What do I tell these people?

What do I tell them?"

They get a storm that's gonna be on top of them in a handful of minutes that may not be survivable in a mobile home.

And where do they go?

I know they don't have shelters.

Do I tell 'em to leave?

Do you just watch it happen?

We gave them over 10, 15 minutes of advanced warning in Rolling Fork.

And prior to that, we were letting people know through Facebook Live and through messaging through our partners.

- We have a strong rotational couplet with a tornadic thunderstorm, moving into Sharkey County.

If you live in the Rolling Fork area, you should be taking cover now.

- We talked about warnings where we gave them lead time.

Lead time for what?

To worry, to just know the inevitable?

No, I refuse to accept that.

We have to figure out a way to give these people a real, actionable thing to do when we issue these warnings.

- In the harsh light of sunrise on Saturday, the damage was clear.

Ultimately, 17 people died.

Most of them in the mobile home park right behind Chuck's.

Everything was disrupted, including electrical power and gas.

The giant white water tower in the middle of town had been knocked down by the tornado, dumping 150,000 gallons of water.

- This is the front of the house.

Right there where that hole is would be our front steps.

- Randy Scott is Rolling Fork's Public Works director.

He's responsible for the city's water and sewer systems.

That night, he was at home with an eye on the threatening weather.

Scott decided to make the quick drive to check on his 84-year-old mother.

- The moment I turn into the driveway, it begins to really swirl bad.

And I'm thinking, I might try getting out and getting inside.

I wouldn't have made it, because it hit like a second later.

At that moment, you're just thinking about, am I gonna live?

Am I gonna survive?

- Scott immediately turned back to his own home.

This time, the drive took almost an hour.

- I started trying to come back through town.

Every light pole in town was down.

Every tree was across the road.

And I make it all the way to where I usually check the water tower, and the tower's gone.

- He was able to reach his wife, Lisa.

- I slept about two hours that night, got back up.

And then, that's when I started trying to assess where the city was with the water and the sewer.

Because, you know, you don't know really how bad things are, if you can even fix it good enough for people to stay.

- Except for generators, the power was out.

Gas had been shut off.

With the help of a friend in the Mississippi Rural Water Association, they went to work on restoring the water supply.

That Friday night, Randy Scott had understood he had to make a choice, try and salvage his family's belongings, or help his community.

- You don't know if you ever in your life, you're gonna be put in that position.

But when it happens, you know it's you.

You know you're the only one.

You're the only one that can do the job that has got to be done.

[ethereal music]