MARSHALL COUNTY, Miss. — The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency says utility crews are making progress in Marshall and Benton counties. But there are still outlying areas within the Holly Springs Utility District experiencing outages.
Stella Ingram is closely watching every utility truck that rolls through her Holly Springs neighborhood.
“It’s still bad but hopefully I’ll get lights today. I pray. I do. I pray I get lights today,” she said. “I just pray that my lights are going to come on soon, ya know?”
Tuesday marks a week since an ice storm crippled Holly Springs and Marshall County and left thousands of customers of the Holly Springs Utility District in the cold and dark for days on end.
For some folks, Monday brought sunshine and renewed hope when their power was finally restored.
“Got a hotel in Oxford and I been down there ever since. I came in Saturday to check, still no power. So, I came home this morning and it was on,” said Floyice Dilworth of Holly Springs.
The inability of HSUD to get power restored in a timely manner for Marshall and Benton Counties raised the anger level of many customers like Tommy Skelton.
“I think it’s just ridiculous ain’t nothin’ getting done no quicker than it has,” Skelton said.
Mississippi’s Emergency Management Agency took over restoration efforts Friday and brought in utility crews from other counties to assist HSUD.
And power started slowly returning.
“We made some major progress yesterday in getting ht feeder lines done and that is significant because that’s where you get your individual power in your homes and in your businesses,” said MEMA Executive Director Stephen McCraney.
While Holly Springs’ Mayor Sharon Gipson took the heat Sunday, admitting things could have been handled differently.
“Can things be done better? Always. Every situation is an opportunity to learn, but we definitely did everything that we could at this moment,” Gipson said.
The Marshall County School District told WREG all its schools except for H.W, Byers Attendance Center on Highway 72 were opened today.
Some areas of Marshall and Benton Counties are still having sporadic outages and customers are urged to call the MEMA Call Center at 1-833-591-6362
