MONTICELLO – Residents, aid officials and power company workers traced their way Wednesday through the wreckage of homes and businesses turned inside out and scattered across a stretch of Highway 184 outside Monticello.

     Officials with the National Weather Service have determined a tornado did strike outside Monticello on Christmas Day. That tornado has been rated an EF2, with estimated maximum winds of 120 miles per hour and a path length of 9.2 miles.

     “It was as wide as a quarter mile though it was wasn’t that wide through the entire track,” said Daniel Lamb, a meteorologist at the Jackson office of the National Weather Service.

     The Red Cross housed nine families at the Liberty Inn motel in Monticello Wednesday night, said Community Response Coordinator Lewis Herrington.

     Initial damage assessments indicate seven mobile homes and four single-family homes were destroyed, with major damage to an additional four mobiles homes and four single-family homes, Herrington said.

     The Red Cross may also have to go further and open a shelter in Monticello. Herrington said he’s not allowed to house more than 10 families at a motel or hotel.

     The Red Cross made some food and water available Thursday morning in the parking lot of a damaged building on Highway 184. More supplies are anticipated.

     As Red Cross and MEMA officials toured the damaged area Wednesday, power company bucket trucks were busy erecting new poles.

     The Southern Pine Electric Power Company said all power was restored to its customers in the Monticello area by Wednesday. Entergy had power back up to its customers with outages by Tuesday night.

     Though the lights may be back on, some things are gone forever.

     The hulks of trailers and buildings gutted and scattered like matchsticks lined Highway 184 up to the Monticello city limits, the trees around these structures blanketed with pink and white insulation.

     Paul Wilson picked through the remains of the building that was once Bobby’s Grocery & Old Smokehouse.

     Wilson owned the property of the former restaurant and adjacent gas station and had hoped to reopen the restaurant eventually.

     “I was putting money into it as it went along,” he said.

     Until Tuesday.

     “That put a stop to it,” Wilson said.

     The former gas station almost completely collapsed onto itself and there’s not much holding up what used to be the restaurant.

     Wilson was stoic Wednesday, though, pulling out what could be salvaged from the building, mostly chairs and benches.

     “You never know how life is going to do you,” he said, standing next to a trailer stacked with the rescued furniture.

     Residents remain grateful, though, for what wasn’t lost. So far, no fatalities have been reported in the Monticello area due to Tuesday’s tornado.

     Shirley Walker of New Hebron picked her way carefully around the trailer where her sister Carrie Montgomery lived.

     The trunk of a fallen tree divided the trailer nearly in half, with heavy branches dangling right above Montgomery’s bed.

     Montgomery, who is deaf, wasn’t at home at the time. Walker fears what would have happened if she had been.

     Walker thanked divine intervention.

     “Something told her, don’t go (back home),” Walker said. “That’s the Spirit.”

     Not far from Montgomery’s trailer, Shericka Peyton and her family were counting themselves blessed after their own close call.

     Peyton and her family were eating dinner at doublewide trailer when the power went out Tuesday afternoon.

     The tornado wasn’t far behind it.

     The trailer convulsed back and forth in the ensuing high winds. Peyton fractured her shoulder and her brother, Ricardo Peyton, was injured trying to close a window.

     The family initially feared Ricardo Peyton had been struck by lightning, but that proved to not be the case.

     Shericka Peyton was thankful the injuries weren’t more severe but didn’t initially realize how bad things could have been.

     With the tornado bearing down, she first planned to get everyone into the bathtub before opting for a hallway.

     Now, she can point to a tree limb that punched through the bathroom wall right into the bathtub.

     Thinking back to those few moments of decision, Shericka Peyton primarily remembers the winds whipping around outside, violently rocking the trailer.

     “I was terrified,” she said. “We told the kids, just pray.”