![]() ![]() When Charlie Weissinger, the banker-farmer, needs a place to take his two sons, he brings them to the patch of farmland that has had its hooks in him for as long as he can remember. If you want to take the kids to the arcade or something like to have a good time, you’ve got to travel.” With Rolling Fork’s schools closed, she said she has to take her five children out of town to keep them busy. Tasmin Bee, a teacher, is among those who plan to stay, even though the storm blew the roof off the home she bought in August. In communities that have an absence of social capital, federal monies are mismanaged. The problem is, those rural communities are fairly rare. “Communities where there’s strong social capital are fairly resilient. “When natural disasters like tornadoes or floods hit, communities take two different trajectories,” Peters said. In a wet season, water can overtop levees and spill onto fertile soil, swallowing whatever ill-fated crops lie beneath.Īmid a current of distrust, communities that have strong social and civic institutions before disasters strike do a better job of allocating relief funds and retaining residents, said David Peters, a professor of rural sociology at Iowa State University. ![]() The effects of economic stagnation have been compounded by repeated bouts of heavy rainfall that turn tame backwaters into flooded terrain. Rolling Fork has been tested by the elements before. I’m thinking when they get their insurance checks, they may just go somewhere else and buy a house that is already standing.” “Interest rates on loans are really high. “I’m scared a lot of the building won’t come because inflation is so high right now,” Stevens said. Even if he rebuilds, he isn’t sure if many of his old customers will follow suit. Its walls were blown away, but its 26 washers and dryers remain planted to the ground. Jerry Stevens owned the Cloverfield Laundromat in downtown Rolling Fork for 20 years. And they have no reason to other than this is their hometown and their parents are probably here.” ![]() “There’s a lot of young people, they ain’t coming back. “What in the hell are we going to do? That’s all I can think,” Willard Miller, a 73-year-old lifelong resident, said from his driveway as he looked out on his mangled neighborhood. We want to see the bottle trees in our yards to remind people of our rich heritage.” We still want to see some Rolling Fork when it’s rebuilt,” local Travis Gully said as he walked down a hard-hit street near the roughly 135-year-old Rolling Fork Methodist Church a few days after the tornado hit. Volatile agricultural markets and a lack of jobs and new industry have kept Sharkey’s poverty rate at around 35%, nearly double Mississippi’s roughly 19% rate and triple the nation’s nearly 12% rate. Rolling Fork has a proud history, claiming blues legend Muddy Waters as a native son and a role in the invention of the teddy bear, after President Theodore Roosevelt refused to shoot a restrained bear during a 1902 hunting trip.īut the city and surrounding Sharkey County are in one of the country’s poorest regions and were already facing tough economic challenges before the March 24 tornado lashed the community with 200 mph (320 kph) winds, closing down nearly every local business.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |