An outbreak of tornados, strong winds and storms toppled trees and damaged buildings in a rash of spring storms that left one Newton man dead and an urgent care clinic damaged.
Eighty-one-year-old Ronald Moreland, a Newton resident, was driving along Highway 15 in Neshoba County Thursday, when a damaged tree fell on top of his vehicle killing him.
Additionally, Neshoba General Hospital announced Friday the Neshoba Urgent Care Family Medicine Clinic, located at 1120 E. Main St., in Philadelphia, would be closed until further notice after the building suffered severe storm damage. On Facebook, the clinic reported a large section of wall had collapsed due to Thursday’s storms.
“Effective, tomorrow, April 20, 2019, our Urgent Care Clinic will relocate to Neshoba Medical Pavilion, located at 213 East Hospital Road, Philadelphia, MS. Dr. Bobby Smith and Nurse Practitioner, Pam Stokes will both be seeing patients in this location until further notice,” Neshoba General Hospital reported in a written statement Friday. “This location allows the providers to offer the same excellent care that our patients experienced before the storm. Phone and clinic hours will be the same.”
Although the scope of the damage is still being assessed, the National Weather Service said it had confirmed an EF-2 tornado had caused significant destruction in Scott County, with reports of damage in Morton, Madden and other communities. The storm tracked across Scott County Thursday afternoon and passed through Neshoba County just north of the Newton County line.
Newton County residents, while avoiding much of the devastating winds and tornados, did experience wide spread power outages, with Mississippi Power, Southern Pine Electric and Central Electric Power Association all reporting over 1,000 outages each.
Southern Pine released a statement Friday announcing the electric cooperative had requested outside help to come in and assist with restoring power.
“Our crews have been working to restore power, but high winds and tornadoes have caused numerous poles to be taken down. We have requested outside assistance to help us rebuild and restore electric service,” the statement from Southern Pine read.
The utility provider said it hoped to have power restored to all customers by Saturday.
