On Feb. 9, 1994, One of the worst ice storms in recent history hit the Mississippi Delta and Washington County got hit harder than most.
Statewide more than 80,000 utility poles and tens of thousands of trees were brought down under the weight of the ice, leaving more than two million people without power, some for more than three weeks.
LeAnne Ethridge Hughes who was a 12-year-old sixth-grader who lived in Leland when the storm hit said, “I remember waking up and thinking something isn’t right, I looked at my Ironman wristwatch and saw it was after 8 a.m. and then I heard a huge cracking sound, I jumped out of bed and when to the window, I saw all that ice and a fallen tree, I cheered because I knew we’d be out of school for a while.”
Hughes said the Stop and Shop in Leland didn’t have any power but that didn’t stop them from opening their doors to the community,
Tina Hale, who lived and worked in Greenville when the storm hit said, “Our apartment was all electric so we all just bundled up and got through it, I worked at Mortimer Funeral Home at that time and I remember we had to drive the bodies to Arkansaw to have them embalmed because all of Greenville was without power, we were having funeral services by candlelight, it was an extraordinary time that I will never forget.”
Barbara Artman, the wife of former Greenville mayor Paul Artman said, “We lived at 939 Cedar St. Paul and I along with our four children were without power for almost 3 weeks, as the mayor I’m sure Paul could have pulled some strings, and gotten our power back on sooner, but that’s just not who he was as a person, I remember driving to Indianola to do laundry after the roads were clear because they had power in parts of Indianola weeks before anyone else.” Artman said her husband’s father worked for WBAQ back then and he was out near the station checking on the tower when it fell.
“I can’t remember if the tower hit him and broke his arm or if he was trying to get away and got hurt.”
The former mayor of Indianola Steve Rosenthal said, “We were more fortunate than others regarding power outages, because of the radio station out on 448, which at the time was considered a vital communication for Sunflower County, parts of Indianola had power back on relatively quickly.”
Jamie Brown said, “I was 22 living on my own in Greenville, for two nights limbs were crashing down around me, you would hear a crack, and a few seconds later a boom when the limb fell, I had no power for 2 and a half weeks, I remember using the old oil lamps for light.” Brown said her mother lived just down the street from her, and there weren’t any trees around her house, so she let the neighbors park their cars in her yard so they wouldn’t get smashed.”
Barbara Artman said, “That’s what got us through it, we all pulled together and helped each other the best we could.”
